Why was this not better?


A director such as Hallstrom, (yes, often guilty of sentimentality, but who has made some very interesting films, ), one of the finest casts ever assmebled, including three of the best actresses of today and based on a novel by Proulx for Godssakes should have beocome a modern classic.
Why on earth didn't it?

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I thought this film was supurb. It's one of my favourites.

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One of my favourites too.

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i liked it. my friend auditioned for one of those bunny people when she was 7. (I'm 13) :]

yeah but she didn't make the cut :P

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A great question!
In my opinion, it lacked pace. It wandered off in too many directions... is it mystical? The "sensitive", the knots, the visions...Is it character study? Petal being absurd, Bunny being absurd. The Aunt being anti-men. Was it slice of life? The Newfies..the car crash, the beheading... What? The people I saw it with were confused. They ultimately lost interest.
It's ok for a book to wander and explore. You put it down you pick it up, you go with the flow. It's enjoyable. But a film has to take direction, find a definite theme and finish. This film lacked a point.

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Excellent archieleach. Well put. I tried to like this film, but it was indeed paced badly! And the Quoyle character was so dull it was hard to watch him, and I am a big fan of Kevin Spacey.

This film lacked a point.

I thought maybe I just didn't get the point. But no, you're right it didn't have one.



"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."

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I agree with you both. Dissappointing to say the least. Just too choppy all in all.

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choppy is a great word to describe this film. makes me think of the cold water scenes, riding in that horrible heavy boat that Coyle bot; as in seasick.

Cary Grant a few posts back says it all very inclusively.

it was a dark film as was intended. i believe that if there was a medium dose of humor added, it would've been so much better. dark humor of course.

loved Cate Blanchet & Spacy in this tho! not crazy about Julienne, my own personal preference. but i'll bet she had a wonderful surprise when she finally bedded him! that pt is what pulled me thu to the end of the film. ; >)

the movie is lacking in many respects but i still watch it when it's on. if nothing better's on....

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<<A great question! >>

Actually it's an absurd question. ftmpc might as well have asked us: "why did I not like this film?"

It's a question from someone who did not enjoy the film and is now posing a question which presupposes that the film really was as terrible as he himself found it to be (or imagined it to be, depending on one's point of view of the film and the question).

Since he does not explain what it was about the film which he found "not better", how can anyone reasonably answer (unless, of course, they too share his point of view)?

<<In my opinion, it lacked pace.>>

It's definitely a slowly paced film, but unless you demand all your films to be paced like a Hollywood action blockbuster how is that necessarily bad?

There are many slowly paced films.

<<It wandered off in too many directions. is it mystical? The "sensitive", the knots, the visions...Is it character study? Petal being absurd, Bunny being absurd. The Aunt being anti-men. Was it slice of life? The Newfies..the car crash, the beheading... What? The people I saw it with were confused. They ultimately lost interest.>>

It sounds as if you (and the people you saw it with) want films to be simple rather than complex. Complexity bamboozles you. If the complexity was poorly handed you might have had a point, but I had no problem understanding. Nor, judging from the reviews and the posts here, did many other people.

<<But a film has to take direction, find a definite theme and finish.>>

I've got news for you: many films are not like that at all, although I'll grant you many of them are not mainstream Hollywood films.

<<This film lacked a point>>

Not sure what you meant by this.

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[deleted]

J Doe is taught in school to just accept everything and never think
___________________________________________________________________

Could you please outline your knowledge of, and experience in, the American education system.

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I was expecting to LOVE it, I really really tried to like it, but in the end I could not even finish it. It just lost me.
Like others said, it goes in all directions, it has no clear point, and it's way over the top for me, with nothing really relevant to say.

In a word, it's just rambling, not poetic.
That's how I felt, anyway.



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** Spoilers **

speaking of going off into 'too many directions,,,'


I caught the last 30 minutes, maybe. in that portion, a young man jumps a girl at an outdoor rink, and starts humping her in a snowbank (found out in the FAQ that this is his sister!) - Judi Dench shows Spacey a picture of herself with a younger woman and tells Spacey that the girl was the 'love of her life'. That's 2 directions this film veers off into that I don't need. Apparently, there is another (earlier) sex scene which shows (to quote from the imdb FAQ:) 'some thrusting but no nudity.'

I had heard such great things about the film, too. what do those 3 scenes have to do with a guy who revisits his ancestral N.F. home with his daughter to re-discover himself? (And, no - I will not be re-watching the whole thing to find out, either - if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... ).

Also, I chuckle when a viewer finds the pace of a film boring or wonders what the point was, and gets told by pretentious people that they are too accustomed to having everything explained. This thread is entitled 'Why was this not better?' - you have your answer right there - the film failed to engage many viewers. I do NOT need everything explained and from what I saw, the content mix was unpleasant and needlessly trashy. maybe the director thought that a shocking scene where a boy rapes his sister would compensate for otherwise poor story-telling? nope. apparently not.

:-) canuckteach (--:

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hey canuckteach, maybe you could watch the whole movie before you criticize it. I really hope you're not actually a teacher, moron.

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The movie is based upon a fantastic book with alot of details. They should have distilled the movie down to its core. A man is raised by miserable parents and turns out to be destined for bad things to happen (remember in the opening line where he is certain he actually belongs to some other family and is wondering why they have not come to claim him). After a life changing event, he moves to his ancestral home and learns just how messed up his family tree is and he learns to rise above that and make his own way. All the stuff about the decapitated body, etc. from the book is just too much to fit into a 1:52 minutes ( and that is including intro and credits!) This would be a great book to adapt to a miniseries on HBO and fully explore the book.

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For me, the character development seemed off, and it ended up making the movie feel contrived and hollow. As the movie starts, Quoyle is presented as this dysfunctional loser who can barely tie his own shoes and who is stuck in a dead end job because of his repeated failures. He is a sad, broken, pathetic man.

But then he arrives in Newfoundland, and suddenly he is intelligent, social, resourceful, and clever. Sure, he still has flaws, but for the most part, they are pretty superficial. There was very little in showing him actually advance as a character, given the setup that we are to believe at the beginning.

The relationship between Quoyle and Bunny also didn't seem believable to me. The beginning of the movie showed a very tender, loving relationship, and virtually no relationship at all between Bunny and Petal. But suddenly, Bunny only has fond memories of Petal and only contempt for her Dad. Having said that, the movie does provide a bit of an explanation towards the end (Bunny was projecting her own perceived guilt over Petal's death), but the pacing and presentation still seemed off.

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I don't know how this movie could be any better, I think it's a classic and everyone I watch it with likes it very much.

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Wife and I just watched it - both agreed it was a uniquely entertaining movie. One certainly didn't know where it would lead - some appreciate that; others do not. I guess it depends upon one's experiences - as often as not, I have found life to be interwoven with chaotic randomness and in the end, it is what it is.

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[deleted]

not Spacey's best performance
some of the plot and conversations are at least stilted

still a good movie, at least compared to most of the commercial crap we have nowadays

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it was a snoozefest ... too slow and boring like Waking Ned Devine (i'm biased towards hollywood-ish directors)

also - kevin spacey has no romantic chemistry with women

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