Utterly disappointing
Wow! Such an utter waste of big budget, acting talent and viewers' time!
A dismal script makes for a limp, long and winding, pointless film.
If the idea was to show that the whole Gucci family, in-laws included, were a bunch of thoroughly disreputable, unlikable characters, it somehow succeeds. But even that a film can do with wit and satirical acumen - think Barry Lyndon, among many other good stories infused in biting irony.
Here there is none. Most of the characters are so one-sided lacking human depth that one feels as sorry for the strong actors as for oneself having to watch them slogging it out.
Al Pacino gets possibly the worst, flattest dialogues of his whole brilliant career, endlessly repeating that his son is a complete moron, but how he has no choice but to do with him.
Jared Leto is indeed the stupidest of the absurd fools - but he is also such a whining and excessively demonstrative faux-Italian one that each of his much too many repetitive appearances makes the viewer cringe, and wish more that it was him not his cousin who was killed, the faster the better.
One feels sad for Jeremy Irons for the unforgiving small part he is given - but also puzzled by the almost comical zombie make-up inflicted on him.
Salma Hayek's character is so weak and unconvincing that charity commands ignoring it - but for her bravery to have accepted to look so unrecognisably ugly.
Adam Driver's Maurizio Gucci is an ever-grinning inconsistent cypher, different at each turn of the story from the previous one, progressively wasting any capital of interest and sympathy he might have earned at the start of the film.
Even the widely-praised Lady Gaga performance, indeed to be hailed for its intensity and sincerity, does not compensate for the fact that her character is not much more than what it looks like, a selfish, greedy, possessive, calculating but small-minded, and not even particularly bright woman, devoid of any redeeming or even really interesting features - Lady Macbeth she certainly ain't.
And if your interest is about a better grasp of the shenanigans of the fashion world, or even relishing its gorgeous productions, forget about it - it just appears randomly from time to time, here a lengthy discussion about whether Gucci should stoop to being sold in Japanese malls (?), there a pointless few scenes about the problem of counterfeiting, later a rushed Tom Ford show and barely understandable shareholder manoeuvres, everything crammed, none attention-catching, or giving an even remote idea about how such flawed, not obviously talented characters were able to build such a successful fashion empire.
But what really killed the film for me was the extremely misguided idea of having all actors speak English with rather heavy Italian accents, most of them fake - acceptable if the story had taken place mostly in New-York, not Milano, and made even worse when a few Italian sentences pop up for no good reason from time to time. When you shoot Gladiator in English not Latin, everybody understands the practical reasons for that, and nonetheless you can produce a great, credible, make-believe story. So if you shoot a contemporary Italian story, either do it fully in Italian (even dubbing non-Italian actors, such as in the awesome The Leopard with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon) - or acknowledge that English-speaking stars are safer for the box-office to recoup the costs of a big production; but please do not insult the intelligence of your viewers with the 100% false authenticity of painfully faked Italian accents.
In the end, one gets out of the film rather angry, wondering how it has been able to attract so many good or even indulgent reviews.
Could it be mainly the result of the sheer fascination, possibly glee, provoked among us ordinary mortals by a true story of low scheming and even (more uncommonly in the real world) murder among the rich and beautiful?
Possibly, but one wishes it had been much more interestingly brought to the screen - even if one suspects that the actual characters might have been not much more interesting than their film personification.
But cinema is mostly not about strict truthfulness - it is about reshaping reality to make it more intelligible and captivating.
A dismal script makes for a limp, long and winding, pointless film.
If the idea was to show that the whole Gucci family, in-laws included, were a bunch of thoroughly disreputable, unlikable characters, it somehow succeeds. But even that a film can do with wit and satirical acumen - think Barry Lyndon, among many other good stories infused in biting irony.
Here there is none. Most of the characters are so one-sided lacking human depth that one feels as sorry for the strong actors as for oneself having to watch them slogging it out.
Al Pacino gets possibly the worst, flattest dialogues of his whole brilliant career, endlessly repeating that his son is a complete moron, but how he has no choice but to do with him.
Jared Leto is indeed the stupidest of the absurd fools - but he is also such a whining and excessively demonstrative faux-Italian one that each of his much too many repetitive appearances makes the viewer cringe, and wish more that it was him not his cousin who was killed, the faster the better.
One feels sad for Jeremy Irons for the unforgiving small part he is given - but also puzzled by the almost comical zombie make-up inflicted on him.
Salma Hayek's character is so weak and unconvincing that charity commands ignoring it - but for her bravery to have accepted to look so unrecognisably ugly.
Adam Driver's Maurizio Gucci is an ever-grinning inconsistent cypher, different at each turn of the story from the previous one, progressively wasting any capital of interest and sympathy he might have earned at the start of the film.
Even the widely-praised Lady Gaga performance, indeed to be hailed for its intensity and sincerity, does not compensate for the fact that her character is not much more than what it looks like, a selfish, greedy, possessive, calculating but small-minded, and not even particularly bright woman, devoid of any redeeming or even really interesting features - Lady Macbeth she certainly ain't.
And if your interest is about a better grasp of the shenanigans of the fashion world, or even relishing its gorgeous productions, forget about it - it just appears randomly from time to time, here a lengthy discussion about whether Gucci should stoop to being sold in Japanese malls (?), there a pointless few scenes about the problem of counterfeiting, later a rushed Tom Ford show and barely understandable shareholder manoeuvres, everything crammed, none attention-catching, or giving an even remote idea about how such flawed, not obviously talented characters were able to build such a successful fashion empire.
But what really killed the film for me was the extremely misguided idea of having all actors speak English with rather heavy Italian accents, most of them fake - acceptable if the story had taken place mostly in New-York, not Milano, and made even worse when a few Italian sentences pop up for no good reason from time to time. When you shoot Gladiator in English not Latin, everybody understands the practical reasons for that, and nonetheless you can produce a great, credible, make-believe story. So if you shoot a contemporary Italian story, either do it fully in Italian (even dubbing non-Italian actors, such as in the awesome The Leopard with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon) - or acknowledge that English-speaking stars are safer for the box-office to recoup the costs of a big production; but please do not insult the intelligence of your viewers with the 100% false authenticity of painfully faked Italian accents.
In the end, one gets out of the film rather angry, wondering how it has been able to attract so many good or even indulgent reviews.
Could it be mainly the result of the sheer fascination, possibly glee, provoked among us ordinary mortals by a true story of low scheming and even (more uncommonly in the real world) murder among the rich and beautiful?
Possibly, but one wishes it had been much more interestingly brought to the screen - even if one suspects that the actual characters might have been not much more interesting than their film personification.
But cinema is mostly not about strict truthfulness - it is about reshaping reality to make it more intelligible and captivating.
- hudecha
- Feb 13, 2022