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- <text id=91TT2137>
- <title>
- Sep. 23, 1991: View Points:Cinema
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 23, 1991 Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 73
- CINEMA
- A Late Bloomer from the Mulch
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Richard Schickel
- </p>
- <p> The film is nine-tenths exposition. Has to be, since there
- can be no easy (or convincing) explanation of how a 1940s
- murder mystery finally gets resolved, with a little help from
- reincarnation, in the '90s. Yet despite all that boring talk,
- DEAD AGAIN is a hit, the late-blooming rose of a movie summer
- that was mostly mulch. How come? Well, as a director, Kenneth
- Branagh is all distracting bustle, briskly shooing us past his
- picture's many dubious moments. As an actor he gives a flashy
- performance--two accents, neither of which is native to him--in a dual role. And he had the good sense to cast his wife
- Emma Thompson in both roles opposite him. She's an attractive
- lady no matter what era you encounter her in. But nothing quite
- accounts for this silly movie's surprise success. The idea of
- having but one life to lead has always been a bummer, but never
- more than it is for today's health-conscious audience. Movies
- like this one (and Ghost) suggest that working out and eating
- right are not in vain. If they can't assure immortality, they
- may at least keep you fit for the second go-around.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-