wannall

"How could you not like this?" is the title of arumbold's review. It was the question I started to ask myself halfway through episode one. When I was still asking the same question, and finding that I did not, alas, love it, somewhere in episode three, I had to admit that not only did I not love it, I didn't truly even like it so very much. I agree with another review title, by Julie-30, "There's a good reason that A&E never showed this again". It's wonderful to look at, and admittedly a more complete rendering of the novel, but that's not the same as "more faithful". The novel was fun. It was wise and witty and humane and, to use the author's own framing, a delicious repast with many courses, offering a wide variety and so generous a serving as not to be devoured at one sitting, for fear of failing to savour the dish being served up at each course.

I was and am a big fan of the Albert Finney 1963 release. It was also wonderful to look at. And it served up sufficient portions of the author's wit and wisdom, but it was one more thing in particular. It was fun! If it isn't fun, it isn't Fielding's Tom Jones!

Let me get some praise on record before I go further. Unlike some reviewers, I thought that Samantha Morton's Sophia Western was one of this versions' very few spot-on performances. I mean it as no insult when I point out the similarity of her Sophia to Susannah York's. It seems clear that she studied her predecessor, and took some lessons from her, but she did not merely copy that performance. She had, if anything, a more believable take on the mix of innocence, charm, and hot temper, and all the appeal of a determined, self-reliant young woman.

Another standout was Frances de la Tour's Aunt Western. Dame Edith Evans in the 1963 film may have provided some useful pointers, if de la Tour studied her in that way, but without mimicking Dame Evans, de la Tour gave us an Aunt Western that certainly matched my memory of the character in the novel. I will have to study to be certain of this, but I cold swear that her pronunciation when she calls her brother Squire Western "a boor" (his reply: boar? I am no boar!) is identical to that word's pronunciation in not only phonetics but in the musicality of it. Pitch perfect, so to speak. If it wasn't a copy of Dame Evans, it was a perfect alternate delivery.

Most of the rest of the cast turned in solid, serviceable performances. I did not find Max Beesley convincing as the good-natured, high-spirited lad of good, if occasionally faltering, intentions. I would characterize his performance as having competently done evrythig he was asked to do. I just don't think enough attention was paid to the asking. He does nothing that earns our affection particularly.

Also, I agree largely with another reviewer's (keith-moyes-656-481891) opinion that the author floating in and out of the story was a distraction, rather than an addition.

I do not agree with this reviewer's view of the novel at all. He remembers it as a long, rambling, picaresque story. Okay. Long, certainly, but I am never happy when I see that I am already down to the last 50 pages. I want more. Picaresque? Unquestionably. There are rogues and adventurers everywhere! Rambling? Not a bit of it. Fielding stops and expands on whatever point he please, as and when he pleases, but his offerings are the additional spice and herbs that make each course better than merely what was described in the "menu". By the way, the repeated appearances of Fielding in the movie do not at all mirror the "appearances" of the author in the novel. In the novel, he presents himself, a writer, taking his lead from the "honest victualer", who must present to the passersby a menu describing what is to be served up and so entice the passerby into staying to be served. In this light, he "appears" at the beginning of each chapter, telling us what is to be found in the coming "course". That is not at all what is done with Fielding in this production. He is a distraction, more of a buffoon, and was unfortunately a wasted opportunity that could have reflected the original approach to everyone's benefit.

I do not mean to suggest that nothing is pleasant or fun in this one. It's wonderful to look at. Most performances are solid. A few are standouts. The events and situations themselves are amusing in their nature. I never insist that another production of the same story apishly copy the one I adore. There are many good ways to go at any story. However, when I found myself in episode two realizing that I had been interested but not amused yet, it was the beginning of the end. I had not laughed out loud except at a couple of moments from Sophia or her Aunt. It simply wasn't enough to sustain my interest. Somewhere in the middle of episode three I bid the 1997 crew a warm farewell and left them to company of a different audience.

The cast had done their jobs, as asked, no one asked them to have fun at their jobs. I would say that the result was that the audience was served a full course of competently made but rarely interesting dishes.

Of the dozen or so shorts shown at the festival last night (8/11/2023) this is the one I came home talking about. It got the biggest audience response and the hardiest applause. Let's get one thing clear: I'm rating this out of the small universe of short films with which I'm familiar. At festivals like this one, many of them are more like finger exercises at the piano - directors/writers/crew proving that they can establish a moment, light it, shoot it, edit it, add sound to it, and put something on the screen that looks like it should be in a feature film. We Forgot could certainly be a sequence in a feature film, but it stands on its own entirely, and in my opinion shows what you can pull off if you have an idea - even a goofy idea - and believe in it enough to go at it with conviction. That's what we saw in We Forgot.

I have to accept that there is a bit of a spoiler out already in Coventry's review, spelling out cure, cute, cake, curse and so on as the labels on the syringes. The gag is that only the C and E are visible, and we are shown very quickly (that's a key element) that the labels are all different, and unpredictable. We get invested pretty fast in figuring out what the label was from the result of the injection.

Think about close-up magic. Someone does something right in front of you, and you know it's a trick, and you get caught up in trying to see it, since it's right there, a foot or two away from your eyes. And if the magician is good, skillful, and best of all clever, then you are left surprised, amused and completely entertained, knowing that you were looking right at the action and missed the trick. That's very much what happens in We Forgot.

It's "only" a short, so it's not realy worth going any further into this, and it would be difficult to do without more spoilers. There's only a few minutes of action to deal with after all.

The two guys are somewhat dimwits. That's a fair characterization. The accusation that the premise is not presented well is way, way off. This short was one of the few that, although it could be in a longer film, stood solidly on its own, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It's the first one we all talked about when we convened outside the screening room.

I stepped in to review this because I thought the rating of 3 stars was a gross injustice. I'm on the record with my 8 now, and if you get a chance to see this, go see it. By the way, the success of the trick depends on some very successful editing and pacing in the middle section, so don't overlook that there is considerable skill on display here.

Enjoy.

Here are some things this movie is not: It's not gory. It's not a constant assault on your ears. It's not a world-level apocalypse. It's not nonstop ghouls or ghosts or bonecrushing action. In short, it's not any of the things that put so many of our current movies so far over the top.

It occurred to me at the end that I was grateful to everyone involved. They made a very straightforward ghost story with some unexpectedly effective human scale movements and some very credible takes on parents who lose a child. It's not about losing the child. That's more complex and not supernatural. This is a ghost story built on top of the loss of a child, and that loss is well enough handled to provide some unexpected opportunities for the performers, especially Sarah Wayne Callies as Kristen, the mom.

I'm also grateful on another score: Someone apparently believed that Nicolas Cage could still be a competent actor in human scale role and took on the job of reining him in or whatever it took to get him to show and do the job.

It's just a good little ghost story. It's not brilliant, but it's clever enough. I was pleasantly surprised as things kept developing without great leaps or Earth-shattering revelations of staggering proportions. They found a good little premise. They built on it well enough to craft an entertaining hour and a half. And they just got on with it.

I'll side with everyone who said that it is not something you can call excellent. That's true. Sometimes, though, good enough is good enough. This is good enough to give it a watch and enjoy a movie which could have been a bit better, but of a kind and scale I wish they made more of these days.

In short: If a good old-fashioned ghost story will entertain you, you'll enjoy this. Everyone in cast and crew does a credible job, and no character does anything stupid. Thank you!