Michelle Pfeiffer

I Could Never Be Your Woman
$14.95
I usually like romantic comedies, but this one was poor and humorless. Despite Michelle Pfeiffer looking more striking than ever, she couldn't pull this movie out of a hole created by a shoddy script. The prerequisite for a romantic comedy is the chemistry between the leads. None here. You can believe Pfeiffer and Clooney fall for each other in One Fine Day, but this romance needed more than spray confetti.

Cheri
$29.99
This movie reminds me of the song by Cracker, Teen Angst, 'what the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in the head.' In this case, does the world really need another period piece film?

Michelle Pfeiffer plays a retired prostitute in 1890's France (oh yes the film uses the word courtesan to make it sound better, but we might as well call it like it is) that falls in love with her best friend's 18 or 19 year old son Fred, nicknamed Cheri. They spend six years together during 15 minutes of the film. The rest of the film is all about how much they loved each other but could not be together. Oh the unrequited love story, if it just weren't for society, they could live blissfully together forever.

The cast is interesting. Michelle Pfeiffer is so gorgeous in this film. Nobody has a right to be this beautiful and have such a gorgeous body at 51 years old. The revealing scenes are artfully done. Kathy Bates, to me, was perfectly cast as another retired prostitute, Cheri's mother. Compared to all the other characters in this film, an old man dressed up in drag, an absolutely hideous massive woman, and the other assorted old 'courtesans', she fit in perfectly. Rupert Friend plays Cheri, a skinny long haired young man.

Across the board the acting was horrible. Everyone read their lines. There was very little emotion in anything they said. It is entirely possible the script was the problem. The film was translated from two French novels by Collette. There are phrases in French that work very well, but when translated literally turn into needlessly complex English. At one point Michelle Pfeiffer says something to the effect of; oh one must not do this because one will... A perfectly wonderful phrase in French, using the 'on' noun to mean literally one, but more generally we or us. In English, it becomes a horrible phrase.

Film director, Stephen Frears (High Fidelity), reads the most annoying voice over narration ever used in a film. Every piece of a film should add to the enjoyment or illumination of a film. Music, sound effects, editing, framing, and dialog, when used properly are incredibly powerful. In this case, the voice over story telling added nothing to the film, it mostly detracted. In addition, Frears does not have the most pleasant voice.

The sets are gorgeous. The film does not show much of Paris, although parts do take place there. No this is not a film with gorgeous views of Paris. Mostly the film takes place in the French countryside, but the credits show that it was filmed in Germany. The beach scenes in Biarritz are beautiful. I'm not sure if I watched the same film others have reported, but there were no sumptuous views of Paris and gorgeous Belle ���poque scenery. There were some very lovely homes, gardens, and countryside; but not much of Paris at all.

Sadly this film natters on far too long, after 30 minutes of the 90 minute movie I wanted to find the fast forward button (I did resist and suffered through the full 90 minutes). I had absolutely no emotional connection with any of these characters. The dialog annoyed me. The only saving grace was seeing how well the beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer has aged.

The Michelle Pfeiffer Star Collection (Love Field / Fabulous Baker Boys / Married To The Mob / Russia House)
$24.98
Just for info purposes, the titles in this MGM set are:

Married to the Mob (1988)
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
Russia House (1990)
Love Field (1992)

All in all, these feature some wonderful Pfieffer performances from her heyday. And the price is great,too.

Dangerous Minds
$14.99
I haven't seen Dangerous Minds for ages, apart from bits on TV on holiday, which I wasn't really paying attention to at the time. When I found it on DVD for cheap, I bought it.

As soon as I put this DVD on, and it started up, I remembered all the characters instantly. I even remembered what happened in the movie.

But really, there's nothing new here that hasn't been done a thousand times before, and better. The story is pretty generic, and is almost a direct copy of what happens in Sister Act 2. Even the cast look pretty similar. A former marine comes in to teach the 'bad' kids, who have managed to be unteachable up until now. She teaches them karate (without actually touching them of course), teaches them a few choice phrases about choosing or wanting to die, and boom, she's the best teacher ever.

The kids are pretty stereotypical too, there's the choice bad guy, with the girlfriend who wants to protect him, the other bad guy who wants to be bad, but has a good family behind him and all the other stereotypes you can think of. Any fans of Hackers will recognise Renoly Santiago from that. What's shocking is that Wade Dominguez, who played Emilio (the bad guy), actually died at the age of 32 in 1998, from respiratory failure. I couldn't believe it when I read that.

The only real lasting impression that Dangerous Minds will leave you with is the song that was everywhere when it was out "Gangster's Paradise". Otherwise, it's pretty forgettable.