Reviews

Heaven only knows why I watched this through last night; Just the old, moldy Agatha Christie '10 Little Indians' formula, peppered with a bunch of tired Vampire tropes acting on the requisite motley crew of 'stupid white folks' to paraphrase an old Eddie Murphy joke. Must have been a rich payday for Giancarlo Esposito to appear in this extremely slight 'scare-fest', his screen time limited to 5 minutes at the start and maybe 15 at the interminable end, with his character ultimately creating a plot hole you could fly a B-29 Superfortress through... What points I could grudgingly 'scare up' awarded for set design and special effects.

I've pretty much bailed - for good - with this moronic episode that would insult a Trump fanboy's intelligence. First, Bimbo Liz, the FBI profiler, is getting married - again - to the guy who was originally paid to woo her and make her his wife - and who later tried to kill her (before she subsequently tried to kill him AND held him hostage for months). They decide that morning to have the wedding that very afternoon. Then Red (and let's face it, he couldn't possibly know every gonzo international creepy criminal in the frigging world because there's not enough willful suspension of disbelief in the known universe to tolerate this nonsense) learns that criminals intend to steal a nuclear bomb and, per usual, tells Bimbo Liz. She then waltzes into the FBI building in the morning and alerts them about the bomb, and then it's 'By the way, Tom and I are getting married this afternoon, and I hope you can all make it after you put down that pesky nuclear threat to the entire world in the next couple of hours. See ya, gotta go!' (ostensibly humming 'Get me to the church on time' in her empty, cobwebbed transom). To add insult to injury, I had to fast-forward thru the dull-as-dishwater first act with killer/husband-for-hire Tom and Bimbo Liz - who couldn't 'profile' a chipmunk - making googly eyes at each other.

Sigh. I ended up gving it TWO more chances (with judicious additional bimbo fast-forwarding) as the nuclear crooks shoot up the wedding, Liz gets dead (the _only_ bright spot in 60 some episodes, but you KNOW it's ALL a subterfuge to get the baddies off her scent and she'll reappear in season 4 like the nastiest unshakable case of jock itch). And Red is ALL broken up episode's end to 'lose' the airhead... so I said, what the hell, one more episode won't hurt (more fool me...) to see what the writers do without The Bimbo dragging the whole friggin' ship down to Marianas Trench depths of idiocy.

Opening scene, we find Red in an opium den smoking /snorting /stabbing, whatever, sleeping off the devastating hurt (I'd be having the party of a lifetime, but...) and he grabs a cab out to Cape May and hides in a deserted bed and breakfast, one of those 'Summer of 42' snobby but rundown New England beach mansions, and (what a shock!) meets a mysterious woman... About 6 minutes on, I KNEW that this whole episode was going to be tossed off as an opium dream, and the chick was going to represent The Dead Mother of Dead Bimbo (an annoying running subplot that is not worth the effort to explain). Or...are they??? Tune into the next juvenile, inept, unbelievable 150 frigging hours or so of...the Bleccch List.

Never Again. I'd rather have the equivalent of root canal applied to my penis and scrotum. The ONLY thing I'll miss is that tall brunette Mosad agent Navabi (sic). Wouldn't mind dancing the horizontal tango with that one.

I admit, I watched all of 20 minutes of this worthless trash, curious as to what the reasonably talented Essence Atkins was up to these days. For those who find humour in a dog being run over and killed in the first few minutes, or pouring oil over a teddy bear and simulating sex with it, you will have a field day. For anyone with a functioning brain - which has never been evidenced by ANY of these clueless Wayans morons, going all the way back to the excruciatingly UNfunny In Living Color which also vomited up Jim Carrey, the most talentless comedian of the modern era, your reaction will be the same as mine. Absolute, unmitigated garbage. And it spawned a sequel????? Wow. Only in a country that elected George W. Bush twice, I guess. SMH.

Two stars, one for each of Alyssa Milano's nipples. This snore fest is notable only for Alyssa's nude scenes, obviously at a time in her career when she was concerned that she'd be relegated to the child star dump bin unless she did something drastic. No sense belabouring the plot; it doesn't even function much as a vampire movie, so don't include it your 'Fangoria list of vamp flicks.' And Alyssa's hooters, while substantial, aren't even that attractive, IMO. Oh, and Martin Kemp, who WAS effective in the great English flick 'The Krays' with brother Gary, must have had a lobotomy in the interim, because he walks through this like a man relieved of his frontal lobes. And no-one else, including the fetching Jordan Ladd (Cheryl's little girl) can act, not that they have anything to work with. My advice? Fast forward to minute 50 and get an eyeful of Alyssa's considerable assets, and abandon as soon as she puts her shirt back on.

Well to do American divorcée with more money than brains buys a rundown villa in Tuscany. (Much more money; whilst having to dicker over the price, she subsequently manages to cook sumptuous buffets for her workmen and wander around Italy indefinitely with no job or apparent means of support.) Interminable boredom and the inevitable Italian lover ensue; this is a chick flick in the most pejorative sense of the term. Lane acts like an unskilled clueless teenage ingénue throughout - which dynamically clashes with her seriously fading looks - along the way smashing into a variety of (mostly Italian) cardboard stereotypes, dykes, divas, senile contessas and gigolos among them. Bloated with unnecessary scenes, the most ridiculous being a clumsily inserted and pointless recreation of the fountain scene in 'La Dolce Vita'. (A similar conceit was used in an effective and appropriate narrative context in 'Only You', Norman Jewison's vastly superior ode to Italy and romance). 'Tuscan Sun' may be the most vacant piece of cinema of the last decade, despite its admittedly well-lensed panoramas of Italy. Bonus negative point for the extraneous lover parachuted in at the last minute to provide requisite Hollywood ending for its targeted audience of Oprah-brainwashed housewives. Avoid at all costs, unless, of course, you view Oprah and Dr. Phil as pinnacles of intelligent discourse.