Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

matthewkessler The book, Lord of the Flies is a very complex novel, and to completely grasp it the complexity of the novel, you have to have a higher understanding of English lore. The movie is the same way, to understand it you have to understand the book and the symbolism. The movie is alright just on its own, but the book is just on another level that the movie never seems to reach.

italianredneckgirl This adaptation of William Golding's chilling novel, that bears the same name, is decidedly American. Although brilliantly acted, this American adaptation of the classic lacks the essence of the novel. The changes are obvious. There was no plane crash, no choir of boys, no symbolism that was the rich undercurrent of the novel.Upon arrival, in a raft that mysteriously disappears after the opening sequence, the boys; seemingly from an American military school, are stranded on an uninhabited island, presumably somewhere in the Pacific. The film moves quickly without allowing the viewer to develop any attachment to any of the boys. The vulgarity used by the boys was superfluous and unnecessary. Further detaching the viewer from the experience by setting them on edge by the verbosity of these boys. The vestige of the Captain? on the island with the boys veers us further from the novel. Although some thought was used to turn this "last adult" into Simon 's monster, the delicacy of the situation is manhandled until warped into obscurity. There is no symbolism, no hidden fear of the unknown. The viewer is lead to the conclusion rather than discovering it, as it occurs in the novel. The deaths of Simon and Piggy were almost as an afterthought, rather than chiefly main points. There is no frailty of Piggy, with his restrictive asthma. No idyllic beauty in Simon. The very features that endeared the reader were lost on the viewer who had no connection to the boys. And without doing so, their deaths were just relegated to gratuitous violence. The underdeveloped character of Roger made Piggy's death nonsensical. There was no shattering of the conch. No forethought that Roger was the true evil of the island. The reason the boys followed Jack. The threat of psychotic violence wrapped up in a tween wrapper. Jack and Ralph, albeit most developed characters, were shallow. The child actors portrayed their roles brilliantly. But we're underestimated by screenplay and director. An underlying fault within the entire project. Giving this film such a high ranking was out of love for the story. The enigmatic island, the poor tortured Ralph, and for the loss of innocence. Overall, if you have the means, seek the original 1963 version and skip The Lord Of The Flies, Gilligan's Island edition.

bandw I have read Golding's book and seen the 1963 movie. You may ask why I watched this remake and, after suffering through it, I have to ask myself that question. Remakes of excellent movies are always risky, but if you are going to do a remake at least you should aim to create something better, or offer a different and interesting interpretation. This movie does neither, it follows in the footsteps of pretty much all remakes--it is a disaster. The real tragedy is that someone who sees this before reading the book or seeing the 1963 film will be inclined to give a miss to those superior works.For whatever reason major plot points of the book have been reconfigured. This is all well and good if the final result is engaging, but here the changes are a degradation, resulting in a loss of dramatic effect and allegorical meaning. Instead of having proper English schoolboys stranded on the island, the boys here are cadets from some United States military school. The story has been updated from the early 1950s, apparently to sometime in the 1980s judging from the language used, mention of TV series like "Alf," and the talk of being captured by Russians. The main point of Golding's book was to show that even the most civilized English boys (one group among them having been the school choir), can behave savagely when civilization is stripped away. It is less surprising here that boys from a military academy come to behave badly, particularly in the 1980s. Using about every major swear word in the English language, the kids are not at all likable.The acting is sub par, even for kids with little experience. They don't really talk to each other, they just read their lines. There is no spontaneity in their behavior. I have never seen a more pathetic attempt at crying than what is on display here. Chris Furrh is much too much of a pretty boy to be believable as the blackguard Jack.This movie offers a classic example of where color can be markedly inferior to black and white. In this movie, where the focus should be on the kids, they are swallowed up by the lush vegetation. After over forty years I still had vivid memories from the 1963 movie; after only a week I have had few specific memories of this movie.Perhaps the most irritating thing about this production is the obnoxious score. It is exceedingly distracting, constantly drawing your attention to it in trying to make up for lack of any dramatic tension provided by the script. In some of the final scenes the music is a flagrant ripoff of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." If I had not read the book nor seen the classic 1963 movie, I might not be so hard on this, but having had those experiences, it is impossible not to make comparisons, and this falls short. A great effort made to take a step backward.

chirpling You may notice that the above line is from the black-and-white 1963 adaptation of William Golding's classic book Lord of the Flies, rather than the 1990 update which I am reviewing. I regret to say that I have not read the book (don't worry, I intend to), but having seen both films, I safely have something to base my opinions on. The 1963 film is described, both by IMDb reviewers and the film's description, as a faithful and brilliant adaptation of the book. Certainly, it was powerful, bold, disturbing and contemplative, offering a range of great acting and filmmaking. If it is any reflection of the book -- and my upcoming opinion applies anyway in terms of film -- then the 1990 film I am (finally) reviewing is utter tacky garbage.I am not going to complain about the contorting of the plot into all sorts of odd shapes, for that is perfectly acceptable if the end result is mildly worthwhile, but in the case of this Lord of the Flies (LotF) it turns out a mess which puts a sour taste in your mouth. Completely it is destroyed, so that even the crucial underlying themes in the film and, for sure, the book are replaced with brash, overspoken, meaningless messages. Nor am I going to be deliberately obtuse and moan about the inappropriate use of profanity in the film. Rather, I will (rightly) point out the quaint Britishness of the original's characters, which gave the film a timely, sophisticated film and underlined the transformation into savages, and then ask you to look at the new LotF's bratty American tweens, who from the outset behave like the kids even kids want to shout at.Instead of the above "We're not savages!" and other well-written dialogue, we get a half dozen f-words thrown at each of the cast, dated teen gobbledygook that comes out as annoying and the failing attempts of the writers/directors to give the kids that never-get-it-right "badass" look, instead heartlessly Americanising poignant characters with such crude lines as "Shove his d**k in the conch!" and "Shut up, s**thead!", which culminate in two things. One, the "savage" state of the kids not being too different from their normal demeanour, except for violence too over-the-top for kids in a movie which was ignored by adults for starring nothing but kids. Two, mere minutes after the film begins you silently pray to yourselves that these idiots will starve to death as soon as possible.The child actors in this film, unlike those of the 1963 version who acted well and were nicely sympathetic, are plain unlikable and untalented. Although the people who played Jack and Ralph can more or less pass on this front, Piggy in particular has been portrayed as a snivelling, annoying, useless fool who, really, has come out as a crude and over-the-top caricature of the, well, real Piggy. The majority of the rest of the cast are typical plucked-from-in-front-of-the-TV brats (sorry for repeated use of this word). They sit around and their main function in the film is to serve as friction between the leads -- the actors pull this off well, but with a vicious arrogance, playing the role almost as if they are sneering at the people who do fall into this situation, and acting as if they are bullies in a schoolyard (refer to "Shove his d**k in the conch!" for an example of this).In the end, it is clear that the badly put out themes are only second to the all-powerful studio machine, which has blatantly tried to run an aged, classic novel through Hollywood and spit out a streetwise, teen-friendly money grabber (again, see "Shove his d**k in the conch!") However, the dark themes are constantly at odds with this crude method, dragging it down until the two juxtapose violently upon watching. The violence, again, is far more graphic than the original, depicting with stark nihilism the... you find out for yourself. The end result, a badly acted, cash-grabbing, shameful, overly American, crude, visceral, badly "hip" bomb balanced on wobbly, half-hearted gravitas, would be funny if it wasn't so ridiculously shameful.R.I.P. William Goldberg. 2/10