UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
scarr-6
Scott and Lemon do a curious reversal of the 1960 film with March and Tracy in the same roles. Tracy played the Darrow character (defending Scopes) as a cool, rational lawyer (capable of indignation when defending 'truth') contrasted with March (prosecuting attorney) as an emotionally-driven politician with an enormous personal stake in biblical literalism.The 1999 remake has Scott defending literalism as the rational position, with Lemon dancing about railing against religious belief. This interpretation is neither true to the original trial, the text of the play, nor to the issues involved.In my review of the original I've note the historical inaccuracies of the play, which are no more bothersome than the impossibility of cloning dinosaurs from mosquito blood meals in Jurassic.I wish someone would do a play based on the Dover trial: the Nova special shows its inherent drama.
pacinofan58
This version is just plain bad, which is shocking considering the talent involved! If you want to see the best version of this famous trial, skip all the remakes, and rent the classic 1960 film instead. To be fair to Scott and Lemmon, it's not that they are so awful, it is more like Spencer Tracy, and Fredric March were born to play these 2 characters, and they played them to perfection! Dick York, Gene Kelly, and Claude Akins, also brought a realism, and conviction to their roles of the teacher on trial, the reporter and the fire and brimstone preacher... respectively, that the actors portraying the same characters here, cannot come close to equaling. Skip this version, and rent the 1960 film, and judge for yourself.
k_syndicate
OK. I use classic as an adjective when I have good reason to believe it would stand the test of time. This one would.Lemmon and Scott clash again after 12 Angry Men. The movie is very relevant and a must see for school kids.Essentailly the part played by Scott as the theologian is much tougher to play and how he makes a complete fool of himself toward the end of the movie is very convincing. Despite the obvious mistakes he (the chracter) makes, you cannot help but feel sorry for the chracter.See it without commercial breaks (DVD?)!
tcuthbertson
This new adaptation of Inherit the Wind is pretty weak. It's supposed to tell the story of the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial", but it glorifies the whole thing into a preachy non-reality that the real trial never was. The dialogue is painful in its wordiness, with Lemmon and Scott seeming to make the whole thing up as they go along. Apparently, learning your script is a lost art. In this version, the Scopes character is overdramatically ripped away from teaching evolution and thrown in the slammer. In reality, Scopes was never in a jail cell, and the entire trial was kind of a bet between Scopes and the townspeople on who would win (the penalty for teaching evolution was only $100, which was to be paid by a newspaper if Scopes lost). The entire trial was a premeditated media circus conceived with the specific intent of attracting people to move to town. Instead, with Scopes' loss in court the town was considered ignorant by most and the trial was only an ephemeral economic interest. The REAL story, I think, is far more interesting. This contrived version basically rips on the law itself--something which is easy to do and boring to watch.
