Kathryn-3

I sat there with my jaw practically hanging open as I watched this awful movie. I am one of the few people who really appreciated the 1965 mod goof-fest "What's New Pussycat?" As dumb as that film is, it has a stellar cast of comic actors, including the divine Peter O'Toole, the wacko Paula Pretiss, freak genius Peter Sellers, and the lovely Romy Schneider and other-worldly-gorgeous Ursula Andress; they do a great job with the silly, campy script. But what that movie (of five full years earlier) didn't call for is a sequel (or whatever this junky thing is). It is sleazy, creepy and pointless. Worst of all, just not funny. A true ripoff. For a much better movie with Ian McShane as a hairy-chested Lothario, see "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium". It's also very silly and sexist and dated, but at least you won't feel like you have to take a shower after you see it.

The thing I found really amazing about this movie is that probably less than two minutes into this film and all the characters were drawn for you. Extremely good direction. The conflict between the parents, the "sides" the brothers took, the class structure at work.

I loved the addition of the cat to the story line. No one ever cuddled with it or talked to it or anything, but it was so central to the conflict with this family.

I laughed out loud when his parents ask him whether he wrote that song. This film was supposed to have taken place in 1986, and Pink Floyd The Wall was still pretty huge (The album came out in 1979 and the movie in 1982, and the song was all over classic rock radio). It is hilarious out of touch and provincial the academic family is that they have no clue about "Hey You."

I raced to the library to check out this miniseries after having just finished listening to the marvelous "talking books" unabridged version of the book. The first half of this TV version is really very good, but it stumbles quite a bit in the second half. The relationship with the trustee is overplayed and conflicts are inserted between Jean and Joe that don't exist in Shute's story, unwisely in my opinion, as they greatly diminish the power of their love story. I was disappointed to find that the wonderful Bryan Brown's Joe seemed a lot cockier and much less appealing than the man in the book, but Helen Morse's Jean was really quite good. I think they would have had to make this a 10-hour miniseries to develop the outback story properly. But all that said, I did watch whole thing in more or less one go and did appreciate its merits, all the while wishing that someone would do a less soapy remake.