Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

steveo122 Here was Kramer's first chance to make a great motion picture and as a big classic-Hollywood-studio-epic-period-adventure he does a fine job: big, good looking, complicated crowd and action scenes. But...(Confidential!) The studio gave him Sinatra, who had no business being cast as a Spanish peasant and who only took the job (from a real actor) to be able to keep track of Ava Gardener while she was filming in Spain. In the meantime, Grant was distracted by heavy Sophia lust...(She says he never got any!) If you like the stars, if you like old fashioned Hollywood, if you like Napoleonic adventures, it entertains.

fullheadofsteam If this spectacular epic were rated solely on importance of the story, high production quality, including direction, sets, locations, costumes, and cinematography, then who knows, America's Stanley Kramer may have been compared to England's David Lean. And that's the only reason this movie deserves one star above mediocre. Sadly, it is the absolute worst casting for a big-budget, cast of thousands production that keeps it from being taken as seriously and as enjoyably as it should. Sinatra as a Spaniard is just plain pathetic, as he imitates (poorly) a Mexican accent, and he seems very disengaged from beautiful Sophia Loren, with whom he is supposed to be in love. Then there's the addition of the much older Cary Grant playing an English officer who becomes enamored of Sophia, and thereby a rival of Sinatra's, as Grant is more wooden and uncharming than any other of his many movie roles that you might think of. Oh, if only Sophia could save the casting mistakes, and she really tries, but with two male leads who each lack credibility and screen watchability in their own rights, Sophia can't save the characters so miscast and poorly portrayed. Theodore Bikel appears, in somewhat lesser but important role as a French general, but it is terribly difficult to distinguish specifically what accent he is using (or trying to use). So, best advice is to watch the movie uncritically with regard to the main cast, and enjoy the drama and magnificent production! Would I watch it again? Sadly, no.

johnpipe-1 From an old post:" 2) The Gun that's a huge fifty-foot cannon: There are two scenes that I have very vivid memories of. In the first the gun is suspended somehow a hundred feet up in the air over a wooded road, hidden from the French troops. It's night, the Frenchmen march underneath the gun and never look up. There's a line from one of the Spanish, "Why should they look up?" In the second scene, they're hauling the cannon up a mountain (!?) when the restraints break and the gun careens back down the mountain and crashes. "Those details are not from the movie, but from the comic-book version; I had that comic in addition to Forester's 'The Gun', both of which I purchased and read immediately after watching the movie when it first played in the theaters.I specifically remember that "up in the air over the road" comic-book deviation from the movie, it was the first of many details, and the one that I felt was most ridiculous, that disappointed me about the comic-book adaptation; and, I have the movie DVD now, and have watched it recently to confirm various details. In the movie, it's a gully, not a road, the only road is above. The comic-book deviated many times from the movie details.

MartinHafer This is a super-mediocre film. On one hand, the money spent hiring thousands of extras, building a prop cannon, uniforms, etc. resulted in a movie that was spectacular and pretty to look at, but on the other, the film was so poorly made that the overall result is extremely forgettable. The biggest problem you'll probably notice is the casting. Why Frank Sinatra was chosen to be the leader of a guerrilla band in early 19th century Spain is bewildering. While he isn't horrible, he certainly isn't at all convincing physically or in regard to his accent. To make matters worse, the film is exceptionally poorly written when it comes to dialog, so Frank and the other leads are given clichéd and silly lines throughout the film. It was like the writers said to themselves "when in doubt, have the leads argue with each other". So the "dramatic dialog" often just consisted of arguing or Sophia Loren and Cary Grant in a romantic clinch (though NOTHING was done to make this totally improbable plot device probable). The final serious problem was that the plot really was paper-thin and the film was drug out for over two hours by showing scene after scene after scene of the partisans dragging the cannon across the Spanish countryside. The result is dull and forgettable as well as a complete waste of acting talents.