Not looking good
The film isn't finished yet, but it doesn't look good. De Niro hardly making an effort. Kathy Bates has some good scenes, but unless something miraculous happens, the film is awful.
shareHow can you tell? Have you seen a rough cut or something?
shareYeah. I was at a test screening. There was a constant flow of people leaving throughout the movie.
shareThat sucks. This is the second remake (third movie) and the first two were really bad also. Didn't see either one, but that's the talk. Must be jinxed or something.
If you can imagine it, it's not only possible, it WILL be done...
Walkouts? That means it's a movie without car crashes, explosions or gross-out scenes. I'm now really looking forward to this film. To put it mildly, test screening audiences suck. A movie that's hugely successful at test screenings are usually those that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
shareI dunno, you may be right. But it was showing at my local cinema, which normally shows art films, and doesn't really specialise in explosions etc. The minimum age of the audience was 25. Everyone I spoke to seemed reasonably intelligent.
I'm the kind of person who enjoys going to see obscure old six-hour long Russian adaptions of Dostoevsky novels, or documentaries about the Spanish Civil War. Consequently, I have seen no end of dull films. But, no question, this was the dullest.
Improvements will be made, I imagine, given serious editing. The whole narrative structure needs fixing (even at the expense of a loss of fidelity to the source). Cosmetic changes will be there: colours made vivid, a proper soundtrack added.
But I'm not sure what can be done to fix the main flaws: the lifeless scenes, full of dreary stock characterisation, banal dialogue, and unexciting performances. There are a few scenes that are not tedious (mostly involving Kathy Bates), but unless the rest are re-shot, I cannot see this film turning out to be anything other than, at best, stupidly mediocre.
I'm not sure what you characterize as "stupidly mediocre", but remember that this is based on a 1927 novel, and a Pulitzer Prize winning one at that. In 1927, nobody really thought that a story had to be livened up with a lot of action scenes, fights, or chases.
Haven't you ever seen "Citizen Kane"? In that one, a reporter goes around interviewing people trying to find out what made one man tick. I haven't seen this latest version of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", but I do know that the story involves an 18th-century priest searching for some cosmic or metaphysical meaning to a tragedy in Peru (the collapse of a bridge and the death of five people who were crossing it at the time). He interviews all who knew the victims.
Today's average young audiences don't give a crap about subject matter like that; that's why they were walking out. They were a test screening audience selected at random. OF COURSE they didn't like it. Every, and I mean EVERY young audience nowadays is psyched up to see either: 1) an action thriller, 2) a special effects extravaganza, 3) a sci-fi fantasy, or 4) a slapstick comedy. You can hardly expect them to sit still for a philosophical drama unless it's beefed up with extra action (as some recent Shakespeare films have been. Don't get me wrong; I love Branagh's 1996 "Hamlet", but there WAS an added attack by Fortinbras' army that wasn't there in the original; in the play, the army simply marches in.)
It sounds like you didn't read my post. I'm not looking for action, sci-fi, slapstick. I thought it was a bad movie. It certainly wasn't 'Citizen Kane'.
share[deleted]
Have to agree with eyeball kicks and say that having seen it today at a press screening, there were sadly no editing changes made to improve on the complete lack of emotion so sorely necessary to breathe life into this picture.
the music is wildly over-the top distracting, it takes place in spain but only two or three of the actors are spanish--deniro is truly bad in his role---and it feels like an eternity to get to the final scene, which had most people laughing uproariously,despite the tragedy of the moment.
sometimes, despite the great source material, some things are just better off as great works of literature, not a means to a wannabe Oscar pick.