Paul Magne Haakonsen
It was genuine interest that spiked me to sit down to watch this 2014 TV mini-series of the 1968 classic movie. And now that I have seen this TV mini-series I can honestly say that if you have seen the classic movie and enjoyed that, then you probably am not going to be enjoying this 2014 re-invention too much.Sure, the Paris setting was a nice touch, given the architecture and the catacombs in Paris, but there was a little bit too much political correctness in this TV mini-series (not saying that political correctness is a bad thing here). Why change the lead role to an African-American when it was a Caucasian in the original movie? Story-wise, then this 2014 re-make is the exact same as the original, just with extra fillings to make it span over a longer running time. Was that really necessary? No, not really.As for the cast, well people were doing great jobs. But the real talents and stars of the TV mini-series were Carole Bouquet (playing Margaux) and Jason Isaacs (playing Roman).The 2014 TV mini-series is a great introduction for a new audience unfamiliar with the 1968 classic movie. But for us who watched the original, loved and enjoyed it, then the 2014 version is a pale and hollow experience that the world really didn't need.The running time of the TV mini-series caused the experience to be stretched to the limit, because there was too much unnecessary materials throughout the course, and the show was starting to halt and lose interest at certain points.A mediocre 5 out of 10 stars for this 2014 re-make version.
Paul Papadopoulos
My recommendation to those who have not read the novel or seen the original 1968 film version of Rosemary's Baby is to watch this TV movie first. You will have the advantage over the rest of us in being able to judge the merits of the story and the TV movie solely on their own merits. Next read the novel and when finished borrow or buy a DVD of the 1968 original. Having loved the classic Roman Polanski 1968 version starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes I was prepared to be very critical of this remake of Rosemary's Baby as a TV movie. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. The 1968 cinema version ran for about 90 minutes whereas the two-part TV move is close to three hours. Too often when a producer does a remake and is given double the time of the original to fill the audience finds too much boring material that should have been cut. A case in point is the recent pointless remake for Netflix of 'From Dusk to Dawn' as a TV series. Fortunately this is not the case in the 2014 version of Rosemary's Baby as every minute is significant and adds to story and character development. Therefore the additions are interesting. The original story line of the novel has been retained but many new twists and turn have been successfully added. Aside from an intelligent and creative further development and partial remodeling of the story the cast's performance is excellent. Gorgeous Zoe Saldana -an Afro-Latina beauty of Santo Domingo roots - plays the part of the young married woman Rosemary Woodhouse. Miss Saldana seems much younger than her actual 36 years and replaces a pallid Mia Farrow (23 at the time but she seemed much older). Saldana is an accomplished actress with faultless diction and an excellent command of the English language. The husband, Guy Woodhouse, was depicted in 1968 as a very evil looking and temperamental Cassavetes (then aged 39) who dominates his wife Rosemary. Guy, a young unsuccessful author suffering from writer's block is played 46 years later by Canadian actor Patrick J. Adams (aged 33) in his first major role as until now he was basically a TV series actor. Patrick plays the role of Guy not as an evil wife-dominating person but as a rather weak character easily led astray but a young man who has qualms when he sees what has been made to happen to others to further his ambition, whereas the Guy Woodhouse in 1968 has no qualms or misgivings at all so long as his ambitions are fulfilled, even at his wife's expense. While the 1968 Guy Woodhouse has no conscience; the young husband in the 2014 version has so many apparent inward doubts than one is almost prepared to accept that he might well chicken out of the evil role imposed on him by the Castevets. In the 1968 version John Cassavetes was 16 years older than Mia Farrow whereas in 2014Patrick Adams is merely three years younger than Zoe Saldana so there is no apparent age difference. Given the wide age gap of the Woodhouse couple in 1968 and their virtually similar age in 2014 it is understandable that the actors have to be play their role in a different way from the 1968 movie. What was accepted in the 1960s as a dominant older husband lording it over a pretty wane child-like wife is no longer a 'politically-correct' theme in 2014. In 1969 a young Afro-American actress would have be given a role as a housemaid or an ethnic role whereas in 2014 Zoe is shown as a highly articulate intelligent modern young woman whose skin colour is immaterial. In the 2014 movie the racially-mixed but culturally equal Woodhouse couple is deeply in love with each other whereas for most of the 1968 film a loving relationship is patently absent. Most of the rest of the large cast are good French actors probably not well known abroad, but it does not matter. The evil Satanist Roman Castevet and his wife Margaux (Minnie in 1968) are played by a deceptive too-good-to-be true Jason Isaacs, helped in the role by the actor's slightly Saturnine features and a coldly evil looking Carole Bouquet. The Castevets in 2014 are played as a suave very modern and wealthy Parisian couple in place of the rather seedy and obnoxious Brooklyn–accented Castevets portrayed in 1968. However, the same message is given; the persons who offer you help are not always your friends. It often happens in real life that a very young couple with no family in a strange town form close relationships with much older childless married persons who assume a quasi-parental role over them and are frequently the one that initiate bonding. I had some reservations of the switch in cities where the play is enacted. In 1968, as in the novel, the setting was a Gothic and creepy building in New York City. I now realise that the City of Light can be just as creepy and Gothic as in 'The Ninth Gate'. Indeed, the location team had no more difficulty in finding a suitable creepy apartment building in Paris for the remake than had those of the short-lived TV series '666 Park Avenue' or for 'The Devil's Advocate'. Had the couple in the remake known enough French they might have realised that the name displayed on the front of the Castevets' building, 'la chimère (from Greek 'chimaera), means a fabulous beast or monster.
Tony Bush
ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) Polanski's satanic chiller delivers a masterclass in creeping paranoia and growing unease. It pulls off that elusive achievement, the one whereby most of the action takes place in daylight hours in contemporary New York yet still managing to be eerie and spine tingling. The director knows his Hitchcock well and exploits accordingly whilst imposing his own singular stamp of identity throughout. The integration of bizarre arcane dream sequences and surreal events with a wholly modern environment helps form the spiritual core of this truly satisfying urban horror film. Technically and emotionally, it's a winner, and the years have done little to diminish its power.As in REPULSION (1965) before it and THE TENANT (1976) after it, the apartment (block) setting is as much a character as anything or anyone else. Across this concrete canvas, deftly, and in common with those other two films, ROSEMARY'S BABY manipulates audience sensibilities through recurrent interchanging beliefs – from this is really happening, to this is all in her mind, to this is really happening, to this is all in her mind, and so on. The ending is suitably creepy and haunting and will stay with you.So, it's cool, stylish, thrilling, scary, suspenseful – good stuff. I haven't seen it for a couple of years, but intend to revisit soon.Why bring it up? Ah, well, because I just sat through... ROSEMARY'S BABY (2014)...a 240 minute TV Mini-Series in two parts. And this is a diabolical travesty. For the most part, it seems to be intended as a showcase for the dubious acting talents of Zoe Saldana. Ms Saldana takes the central role of Rosemary. She also produces the show along with two of her family.In all honesty, Mia Farrow, who featured in the original, irritates me as an actress in ways that cause me to actively avoid films in which she appears. Apart from ROSEMARY'S BABY, that is, in which her cutesy, whiney, elfin, borderline-anorexic, drippy, fragile, neurotic flower-child persona fits the role and the film and the time to absolute perfection. In anything else, I have to avert my eyes, but in RB she's the ideal choice.Zoe Saldana is very pretty to look at. Outside of that, she irritates me here even more than Farrow in any film that isn't RB . Every other sentence she speaks is punctuated by a nervous and incongruous giggle that becomes really annoying after the first ten times it manifests. And it never stops. Just when you think it's gone, it pops up again. It's the most unnerving and affecting thing about this whole venture. I don't know how much creative control the girl had, but someone should have at least advised her to stop with the giggling every other line as it doesn't effectively represent dramatic punctuation. Maybe they did. Maybe they got fired for it. Lucky them.RB 2014 is one of the most sterile pieces of work I've seen for a long time. It's a resolutely flat, monotone one chord visual drone that is filmed without style, panache, flair or meaning. The script is mundane, the performances are mediocre and there is very little by way of tension or suspense. Actually, that's an exaggeration. There's nothing by way of tension or suspense.The original didn't really need overt special effects to make a point or illustrate anything. This version uses them sporadically – computerised hallucinations, flies, blood, gore, viscera, fire, scalded flesh, etc. It's all amateurish stuff, half-heartedly rendered, and fails to add any life or interest. Worse still, the trajectory of the fates of most of the characters is signposted in the most obvious ways.The one bright spot was seeing Carole Bouquet in a prominent role. She looks a little faded around the edges these days, but remains something of a vision of stylish beauty.Some might wonder why I watched it. Why I stuck with it until the bitter end – which, by the way, turned out to be a jaw-droppingly mindless conclusion consisting of a shot of a portly baby in a pram with luminous blue contact lenses blazing like lasers in place of his eyeballs. And this is scary and disturbing how, exactly? As opposed to laughable?Recently I have been watching HANNIBAL and FARGO and enjoying them. Good quality stimulating and intriguing US TV. HANNIBAL especially pushes the envelope in tone, style and content, with humour so black, serrated and malevolent it almost leaves bite marks. I had an idea that RB might be up to the same standard. Got that wrong.Stayed till the end because I'm a stickler. And an optimist. Didn't get any better. More fool me, perhaps.
