This is about the worst movie I can recall seeing in the past couple decades. What plot there is has nothing to recommend it, The acting is completely lackluster, and the main character is so deadpan she makes Joe Friday from the original Dragnet tv show appear to have been over-emoting to the point of hysteria.
My personal rating system within the imdb universe is as follows:
1 Star - complete waste of time, to the point where I couldn't stand to watch it all the way to the end and turned it off. Usually this is 1/2 hour to 1 hour into the film. There are too many films worth seeing for me to waste much time on the turkeys.
2 Stars - basically a One Star movie, that I happened to watch all the way to the end. While I know I wasted time I can never get back there is a late night effect that makes me not want to start something else too late. So I take the attitude I always had when I went to the movies in theaters and paid cold hard cash to get in. To quote The Who - "Won't get fooled again."
4 Stars - I am basically house-bound so I watch a lot of gubbage that I really probably shouldn't. A 4 star movie is not a complete loss - although it can come pretty close. It certainly is nothing I would ever be willing to watch again. I know when I look up a film and discover I previously gave a flick a 4 star rating I will never make that mistake again. Consequently this is the most important rating I make.
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6 Stars - this is a reasonable movie and I could end up watching it again.
8 Stars - Good movies get 8 stars. If I've not seen them recently I will probably watch them again.
9 or 10 stars - a great movie. This is the sort of film I can watch almost any number of times, sometimes even over a very short space of time - like the time I watched "Bringing Up Baby" twice in two nights.
Were I to use my preferred rating system I would make 4 Stars the top rating, with a symbol for complete trash (ie Leonard Maltin's BOMB rating). Quite frankly I think that 5 ratings in total more than adequately covers the field. Were I to publish a book like Shearer or Maltin or some others, I would not bother with half stars
My ratings are specific to my taste, obviously, but I think they give a pretty good indication of how I think others would react to these same movies, If they started with my rather eclectic taste and background. I tend to avoid Soaps, and "Heartwarming" movies altogether and my ratings reflect my distaste for this sort of gubbage. I am not an "It's A Wonderful Life" fan. Give me the
I like BITTER tales of nasty people gleefully doing vile things to each other - but usually with a sense of humour - or at least one of irony. I tend to avoid romantic comedies and "Scrooge" related stuff (although the Alistair Sim version of "A Christmas Carol" is a film I have watched roughly 1.5 times per decade since it first showed up on television in the 1950s. I've seen a couple other versions too - but mostly I can tell by watching the Trailers for these flicks that I would not be willing to watch the full movie (see "Heartwarming" above).
