terraplane

If you make a movie set in Russia in the early 20th century, why would you include black and asian characters? I ask this because these people were practically unknown in Russia and Moscow at that time, and to a large degree, still are. The character of Mishka, supposedly a friend of the count, could not possibly have been black, especially not a black man with dreadlocks. It is laughable to suggest that a black man with dreadlocks would move in high society in Russia at that time. As for Marina, the same applies. Black seamstresses did not exist. All of this to keep the quotas in line with what a minority of ghastly liberal Guardian readers think is correct. This sort of excruciating political correctness is just insulting. Look what happened to Anne Boleyn with Jodie Turner-Smith as the ill-fated queen of England. It failed on every level. Cultural appropriation works both ways, so why is this rubbish not being called out?

The actual movie looks like a sort of BBC Dickens adaptation done on the cheap. The script is stilted and goes nowhere fast. The shaky camera work is irritating and stupid. A complete waste of time and money that could have been so much better because the book is actually a good bit of stoty-telling.

This entire series could have made a good 90 minute movie. Stretching the rather thin story out to six episodes has left us with far too much superfluous padding and many of the scenes in episodes 4-6 could be shortened or cut altogether. The other big problem - and in this case it is a huge problem - is that the double act of Michael Sheen and David Tennant is so brilliant that whenever they're not on screen the movie falls apart. The two characters of Aziraphale and Crowley are simply in a different league to the rest of the duffers in the cast - with the possible exception of Miranda Richardson who hams it up nicely as Madame Tracy. The scenes with just the children are like something from a cheap children's TV show and need drastic editing, while Jack Whitehall is a complete dud, along with Adria Arjona, who probably got the part because of her resemblance to a certain member of the British Royal family. The script appears to have stolen liberally from any number of sources, notably Monty Python. There are bits lifted directly from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, The Leaping Nuns of the Order of St. Beryl become the Chattering Order of St. Beryl, for instance. Bits of The Omen and The Exorcist are brazenly cut and pasted into the script, and even Mary Poppins gets tugged into the caper (check out the umbrella handle). These stolen moments are all very amusing for film buffs to sit and spot but they also reveal the paucity of original ideas emanating from Neil Gaiman's shallow imagination. By the time Armageddon finally arrives - or not - the movie is long past it's sell-by date and just hangs around like a fart in an elevator. Without Sheen and Tennant Good Omens wouldn't even get a DVD only release. Watch the first three episodes for Sheen and Tennant then ignore the rest.

I sometimes wonder how certain movies ever get made. This is a case in point. The script is very much less than the sum of its parts and the acting veers from risible to very good. The very good being Claude Gensac who plays Ana's Grandmother and Lazarre Gousseau, who plays Gregoire. The implausible story just doesn't go anywhere and the movie is like watching a random episode of TV series. It starts and finishes with no explanation as to what is going on or why. All we know is that Ana is a bit of a loser who doesn't have any kind of idea about anything and cares less about it all, except for Grandmother who she runs to when she has nowhere else to go. She decides to install a new shower while her Grandmother is in hospital but where does she get the money? She has no job and not much in the way of brains it would seem. There are various dead-end threads that wave around in the breeze, like Boris the supposed artist whose mother lives in a very expensive apartment. He's a rotter and she has some history with him but that's all we know. Likewise the former boyfriend Simon - the unlikely named Swann Arlaud - with whom she shares a shower in a motel and her body on regular occasions. The only nice guy is Gregoire - Lazarre Gousseau - who helps her with the bathroom but she doesn't go for nice guys, as he discovers.

The end of the movie is unbelievable. I don't think I've seen anything like it. Ana goes off with yet another bloke who she doesn't even know and who doesn't really want to know her, they sit in a field next to Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut (we don't know why) and then...It just stops. I can only imagine that either they ran out money or just gave up and went home. There must be better scripts out there than this, surely? I wouldn't recommend you to spend your time with this dismal effort, it's just not worth it. The movie should be called Bad Bad instead of Baden Baden.