Nonureva Really Surprised!

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

cstotlar-1 A comedy by David Mamet - it seems like a contradiction in terms... This sparkling film bristles with life. There is absolutely nothing in common with other dialog-oriented films by writer-directors that quickly become talkathons. This film presents its "message" from the beginning and its pace doesn't let up until the end. It's funny all right - not explosive, rolling-on-the-floor humor but humor of a much gentler kind - and everything is wonderfully written and realized. If I had to use a word to describe it, "balletic" comes to mind. The timing and the movements are in perfect synchronization. What a delightful surprise!Curtis Stotlar

Michael Neumann In David Mamet's taciturn comedy of errors a simple Sicilian shoe-shiner is hired to take the prison rap for a mob hit man, in return for anything he desires after his release (all he wants is a boat). But the plan goes quietly haywire when his minder decides to treat him to a final weekend fling at Lake Tahoe, where the old man is mistaken for a mafia don from Chicago. Any other director might have played it for easy laughs, but even in such a whimsical mood Mamet is still a very careful, very deliberate filmmaker, and he approaches each scene with the same attention to nuance emphasized in every line of his trademark dialogue. It's a comedy of smiles more than belly laughs, summed up best by Shoe-shiner Don Ameche's childlike air of bewilderment and naïve trust in everyone around him (shades of Chance the gardener in Jerzy Kosinski's 'Being There'). Nothing seems to trouble him, because he knows a secret most people take for granted: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

cndiver Most of us come from families who came from the old country with practically nothing. Naturally, our grandparents worked from dawn to dusk to survive in the new land and make a better life for the kids. It was the generations that followed that caught the American disease of wanting to become a "somebody" as a substitute for the integrity of the Old World that was left behind. The paradox of this film, the paradox of achieving "the American Dream", of "building this great nation" is that after all the generations of struggle for position, money, and importance, we wake up and realize that it's all empty, that simple integrity and friendship are all that mean anything, that our fore-fathers had that in the beginning.It has been said that in order to save one's life one must loose it....

kaliama "Things Change" is the weakest of acclaimed playwright/screenwriter David Mamet's film directing efforts. It tells the story of an immigrant shoe-polisher (Don Amiche) who agrees to be framed for murder by the Chicago Mafia in exchange for fulfillment of his dreams once he's freed from prison. But before his arraignment he gets a three-day madcap weekend adventure at a mob-controlled Lake Tahoe casino, courtesy of an on-the-outs flunky played by Joe Mantegna. The two have a difficult relationship but form a friendship which is finally tested by film's end. It's nice to see Mantegna and other Mamet regulars (including Ricky Jay and William H. Macy) in a movie that's essentially a comedy, but they and their dialogue seem really awkward in such a silly film. Amiche fares better, and at times is the only saving grace for the film, which lacks the paranoia and psychological wrestling found in most of Mamet's films, yet is still too hard-edged and leisurely paced to get many laughs as a comedy. The late Shel Silverstein was a collaborator with Mamet on the script, which contains clever ideas but is weakly executed. The music by Alaric Jans is unremarkable; not nearly as good as the jazz-noir he contributed to House of Games or his orchestral themes for the Winslow Boy. In short, the film is an interesting comparison piece for other Mamet films, but falls well short of the high standard the others are able to maintain.