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Reviews
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Long and limp.
Was this supposed to be a documentary? A drama? A police procedural? A comedy?
The book it's based on is quite good, as it mildly lampoons that 1985 culture, business, families, and New York. However whoever adapted it into a movie wasn't thinking straight. A literal adaptation would end up to be flat, long, and boring. That it was. With more action, fewer speeches, better acting, and a goofier plot, it could have been pretty good. But instead we got a semi-literal plodding adaptation with almost no pizazz or action. A few bits of perky dialogue, but it just contrasts all the dull and pointless and unbelievable bits. Every movie should have someone you can identify with or a bufoon you can laugh at least a villain you can loathe. This movie has no such character. All weak half-hearted performances that are not bold enough to generate hisses or boos or laughter. Here and there and briefly a half-hearted punchline. They all just point out all the rest of the movie-- flat, dull, and wavering from documentary to spoof to very limp comedy. The writer and director should have had a preliminary sit-down and decided what to aim for. Instead they went with a scattershot approach that just doesn't work. The final courtroom scene was just basically unbeleivable-- not either logical or farcical or serious. As was his arrest-- they had absolutely nothing to charge him with so rigere you lose most of the audience.
The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller (1994)
Unpleasant
Delivers as per the title. P & T tricks are both amazing with overtones of unpleasantness. Punctured eyeballs, blood spurting, death, drowning and dismemberment, the usual stuff they do. When presented in a rather under-produced show, it's rather sparse and a bit less than charming. The guys have major talent but the overall feeling is rather unpleasant. Maybe that was intentional, maybe not.