Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Ratings844
richard-1787's rating
Reviews847
richard-1787's rating
This movie is a mystery to me.
It's full of talented individuals:
Garson Kanin, the director
Paul Jerrico, the writer
Ginger Rogers, who had just won a Best Actress Academy Award for Kitty Foyle and been lots of fun in all those movies with Astaire for RKO.
Two fine supporting men: Burgess Meredith, who did very good work in lots of movies, and George Murphy, who danced with some of the finest in first-string musicals.
Yet despite all this talent, the script here is really embarrassing and the direction and performance of it not much better. I understand how the studio system worked, but why did RKO put Rogers, one of their top stars and money-makers - all those musicals with Astaire in the 1930s - in this turkey?
And why didn't they get a script doctor to put at least a few laughs into this laughless script???
Alan Marshal, the third male lead, had proved in movie after movie that while he was handsome, he had no acting talent and absolutely no sex appeal. He was probably in this to fulfill contractual obligations and there was nothing to be done about that.
But Meredith and Murphy, not to mention Rogers, could have done so much more with an even half-way decent script, which this is not.
As I started off by saying, many of the 33 previous reviewers found things to like here. I couldn't, and I like these performers. Maybe you will have better luck.
It's full of talented individuals:
Garson Kanin, the director
Paul Jerrico, the writer
Ginger Rogers, who had just won a Best Actress Academy Award for Kitty Foyle and been lots of fun in all those movies with Astaire for RKO.
Two fine supporting men: Burgess Meredith, who did very good work in lots of movies, and George Murphy, who danced with some of the finest in first-string musicals.
Yet despite all this talent, the script here is really embarrassing and the direction and performance of it not much better. I understand how the studio system worked, but why did RKO put Rogers, one of their top stars and money-makers - all those musicals with Astaire in the 1930s - in this turkey?
And why didn't they get a script doctor to put at least a few laughs into this laughless script???
Alan Marshal, the third male lead, had proved in movie after movie that while he was handsome, he had no acting talent and absolutely no sex appeal. He was probably in this to fulfill contractual obligations and there was nothing to be done about that.
But Meredith and Murphy, not to mention Rogers, could have done so much more with an even half-way decent script, which this is not.
As I started off by saying, many of the 33 previous reviewers found things to like here. I couldn't, and I like these performers. Maybe you will have better luck.
This is not a great movie, but it's certainly watchable. And the fact that so many of the previous 141 reviewers say that they had never heard of the 6888 and what they accomplished shows that a movie needed to be made on the subject. So bravo Tyler Perry for doing this.
My one objection is that the movie never spends time telling us how these women managed to get through all that mail in only three months. That was their signal accomplishment, what made them famous, and the movie never tells us.
It does tell us that several other units had been assigned the task previously and failed, so the 6888's achievement certainly merits recognition.
The obvious parallel contrast here is *Hidden Figures*, a downright remarkable movie that does not sell its audience short, but rather takes the time to let us see how those "human calculators" accomplished what they did. It makes us admire their ingenuity and intelligence, as well as their courage and perseverance.
I suspect the women of the 6888 had these qualities as well, but we really never get to see it.
There are books on the subject. I guess I'll have to go out and read one.
My one objection is that the movie never spends time telling us how these women managed to get through all that mail in only three months. That was their signal accomplishment, what made them famous, and the movie never tells us.
It does tell us that several other units had been assigned the task previously and failed, so the 6888's achievement certainly merits recognition.
The obvious parallel contrast here is *Hidden Figures*, a downright remarkable movie that does not sell its audience short, but rather takes the time to let us see how those "human calculators" accomplished what they did. It makes us admire their ingenuity and intelligence, as well as their courage and perseverance.
I suspect the women of the 6888 had these qualities as well, but we really never get to see it.
There are books on the subject. I guess I'll have to go out and read one.
This isn't a documentary. It does not try to get every fact right. It's a riff on the life of Maria Callas, just as any historical work of fiction riffs on real figures - while tossing in a few invented ones.
The question is not whether this movie gives you an accurate depiction of Callas' life - for that there are biographies - but whether it creates an interesting story based on some of the facts.
For me, it didn't do so.
Rather, it was a leaden two hours about a self-indulgent drama queen speaking to a twerpy, pretentious young film maker.
I thought Angelina Jolie did a fine job with what she was given - though I thought that the script was second-rate melodrama. I thought the director had mistaken his subject for the life of a snail. Though there is a very clever movie about a snail that is MUCH more entertaining than this.
If you want to see "Callas fiction," try something like the play Master Class, which I also found much more interesting than this.
Yes, the costumes are fine, the sets, etc. But the script just didn't hold me, and neither did the way the director had his cast play it.
The question is not whether this movie gives you an accurate depiction of Callas' life - for that there are biographies - but whether it creates an interesting story based on some of the facts.
For me, it didn't do so.
Rather, it was a leaden two hours about a self-indulgent drama queen speaking to a twerpy, pretentious young film maker.
I thought Angelina Jolie did a fine job with what she was given - though I thought that the script was second-rate melodrama. I thought the director had mistaken his subject for the life of a snail. Though there is a very clever movie about a snail that is MUCH more entertaining than this.
If you want to see "Callas fiction," try something like the play Master Class, which I also found much more interesting than this.
Yes, the costumes are fine, the sets, etc. But the script just didn't hold me, and neither did the way the director had his cast play it.