Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

MarieGabrielle Musical free association, free love and fashion. Genevieve Waite, in the title role, was at the time flavor of the month, not really sure what quality other than oddity, she brings to the role.Donald Sutherland is interesting but creepy. He spews some philosophy on death and reincarnation in his role as a terminally ill count. He brings some nuance to the story, but this does not sustain the film.Some nice cinematography of Brighton Beach, London and the 1960's era, as well as Technicolor fashion and hair we now see routinely on the runway. Okay if you are up for free association and fluff, don't expect too much. 6/10.

moonspinner55 Michael Sarne wrote and directed this odd, sometimes-charming, sometimes-not chronicle of a wide-eyed art student in '60s London who falls in with a decadent crowd. Helium-voiced Genevieve Waite is like a cross between Anne Heche and Shirley Temple. She has fantasies of bathing nude in a pond full of lilies and being dried off by her girlfriend dressed as a maid, and later one featuring the same friend being strangled by her lover. "Joanna" is incongruous: Sarne is in love with old-fashioned trappings and modern techniques. Some of his shots are delectable (Waite crossing a bridge at sunset, or running down a pathway lined with trees), but the film's eye-candy needs something substantial to go with it. As to Waite's Joanna, I never understood the leading character or felt anyone on-screen did either (at one point, the girlfriend says to Joanna, "I don't sleep around as much as you do", but we never get the impression that Joanna is promiscuous--she seems only to want true love). Donald Sutherland gives the film's only solid performance as a fey Lord and the sharp, canny editing keeps the picture popping. Otherwise, the movie is just a mod bauble, and only a hint of true cleverness is left behind. ** from ****

richarre I get that Joanna is a sort of Candide, an innocent heroine whose adventures are probably meant to give the director an opportunity to comment on aspects of the culture. That she has (or should have) this larger function is the only thing that could justify the big song and dance at the end, which is supposed to show that Joanna's transit through the other characters' lives has turned them around, made them see beauty and sweetness and gentleness and other faux hippie-dippy nonsense that would have made Voltaire scream. Joanna might be interesting if she were a puzzle, but she is a blank, she can barely be said to have any behavior at all. She is a beautiful rag doll, and your only response when she is mistreated is to hope that getting taken for granted or slapped around (and her bleating sorrow that follows) won't mar her features. In a general way, of course, you hate to see a movie doing some of the things to a character that are done to Joanna unless there is some point to be made, and the best point that could be made in this kind of Candide story when, for instance, Joanna's boyfriend philosophizes that women want to be treated rough and then he does just that -- as I'm saying, the best point that could be made from this is that this is the way the world is, here are some of the terrible cracks exposed in the world Joanna lives in. But no, the movie goes along with the troglodyte attitude and Joanna responds the way her boyfriend intends she should. All this might still be fun in an archeological kind of way, i.e., look what passed for social philosophy in the Sixties, if there were any energy in the directing, the writing, the music or, barring all that, in more than one or two of the main performances. Joanna's a dead fish. Donald Sutherland is even worse, but for such a great actor to put in such a poor performance says a lot about the writing and directing (was there a dialect coach anywhere?), but especially the writing. Sutherland's part is easily the worst written of a badly written movie. How could it not be? He is meant to exemplify the psychedelic metaphysics of beauty and oneness that the movie makes pastel stabs at pushing, and he has to spout all this hooey about it and he is supposed to find its embodiment in that shapely potato, Joanna, and then he is supposed to die, which is the best thing he does. Do I need to summarize? When I and my co-workers start talking movies and nominating the worst movies ever made (we do spend more time on good movies than bad) Joanna is high on my list.

William-37 I knew there was something special about this movie after my law school roommate asked me out of the blue how many times I'd seen Joanna. Turned out he had another friend who spent every weekend looking for this movie in the theaters (we're talking pre-video tape days here folks). I remember being carried away by the romance of this movie, feeling totally part of the London scene it portrayed, and I liked Donald Sutherland (whom I'd never seen act before) quite a lot. I guess Genevieve Waite never made it big as a film actress, but that picture of her clothed only in a necktie that ran in the New York Times ad for this film, with the trailer "Cult Film of the Decade," sure made an impression on me in my early 20's. Highly recommended.