aldiboronti

And the one is Todd Phillips. This gifted director clearly let the first movie swell his head and thought he could do anything. Sure he can but that doesn't mean the audience will like it. And the audience didn't. In fact they hated it, and rightly so. The guy must have taken leave of his senses. By filling more than half the film with badly sung songs he suffocated any decent movie that was in there struggling to breathe and managed to turn out one of the worst films ever made. That is some achievement.

Really, this is terrible. Every time you think something decent is about to happen Joaquin of Gaga start singing and make you feel sick. Joaquin's voice isn't too but Gaga sounds like a cat being tortured. I can understand why the studio heads greenlit this but I'm sure they regret it sorely now.

After watching this film I know what it's like to drown in molasses. I honestly wanted to like this, I love a good folk-horror movie. But it soon became clear that this wasn't good at all. Sure, the actors tried their hardest and I give them credit for that. But they were fighting against the current and it eventually overwhelmed them. I have nothing at all against slow films, I love Last Year At Marienbad but there's a real art involved in holding the viewer's attention at such a pace. You risk sending an audience to sleep if you do it badly. And that's the result here. 4 points for the effort..

Yes, the acting is way over the top but it's precisely the style this sort of work demands. We're watching a Victorian-type melodrama here and realism is certainly not wanted on voyage. Actors like Wallace Beery and Fred Kohler know just what's expected of them and deliver with gusto, chewing up every bit of scenery in sight. Buddy Rogers and Mary Brien are perfect in their roles, I swear one can smell magnolia blossoms in the air when they're on screen.

This tale of old Mississippi is such an enjoyable film but one has to leave one's modern sensibilities at the door as the price of entry. Trust me, it's worth it!