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- From: lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Laurie Mann)
- Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
- Subject: TOYS
- Date: 21 Dec 1992 13:26:51 GMT
- Organization: Stratus Computer Inc, Marlboro MA
- Lines: 32
- Message-ID: <1h4gmrINNe19@transfer.stratus.com>
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-
- This is one of the most frustrating movies of recent times. For the third
- time, Robin Williams has made an overblown movie of style over substance (the
- other two being Popeye (which I liked) and Hook (which I really didn't)).
- Williams played the quietly manic son of a recently-dead toy manufacturer whose
- inheritence is passed on to his uncle. Joan Cusack played his sister and Robin
- Wright played the woman he gets interested in. I don't remember the name of
- the actors who played the uncle or Cousin Patrick. I think the actor who
- played Patrick was acting in his first movie, and he played his role so
- straight that he provided a perfect foil for Williams and Cusack.
-
- The first hour of this movie is full of delight and fun surprises. The writing
- is a tad weak, but the acting was pretty good considering. In a movie like
- this, the acting usually dies before the writing does, but that didn't happen
- here. The art direction and camera angles were inventive. The movie starts to
- fall apart in the middle and dies during the last half (though the last ten
- minutes or so return to being quirky).
-
- Barry Levinson and the writer (or did Levinson write this one too?) should be
- taken out and "re-educated."
-
- I saw this movie in a cinema with eight theaters. When people saw the long
- faces walk out of this movie at the end, about 1/3rd of the people waiting went
- to see Forever Young instead (the line for A Few Good Men being too long).
- This movie is being marketed as a comedy, but for nearly twenty excrutiating
- minutes, there's absolutely nothing funny about it.
-
- * In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak *
- * because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I *
- * didn't speak because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade *
- * unionists, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a trade unionist... *
- *Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.*
- * Rev. Martin Niemoeller [Why to March on Washington in April] *
-