Word: dopey
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After a decade of warm-weather box offices defined by mammoth action films, Hollywood is partying in 1999. This is the season of silly--the goofy summer. Also dopey, because the humor is so often about bodily functions. And happy, for the studio bosses pleased not to be sweating out each weekend's take for a Titanic-priced epic that may do Postman-like business...
...computer whizzes had generated something fresh, but it's pretty much shape-shifting and meteorological anomalies as usual. These batter into senselessness the wan efforts, led by Brendan Fraser as the chief tomb robber, to impart a sort of cheeky, Indiana Jonesish air to this hopelessly overwrought and deeply dopey movie...
...thewindow? Fine. Want to direct a period piece likean Aerosmith video? Okay. But must you givetalented lead Cate Blanchett such an atrociousscreenplay to work from? Must you so steadfastlyrefuse to permit your title character theslightest bit of development until the last reel?Kapur's film may have conned enough dopey Academymembers to secure it a nomination, but inevitablecomparisons to Shakespeare in Love ("thatother Elizabethan film") will destroy Elizabeth'sOscar prospects--and rightly...
...dramatic performance. As in thedirecting category, Benigi's portrayal of therelentlessly mirthful Guido is for the film but bythe same token is necessarily unextraordinary.Bengini is an actor of great comic talent, butthat can only take him so far. The whole point ofLife is Beautiful is that Guido must keephis dopey, funny face on from start to finish inorder to combat the horrors of Nazism. As such,the role ends up being fundamentallyuncomplicated. There is no way that Benigni'sperformance here can compete with the nuanced andcomplex star turns of the other nominees. We mustnote, though, that he did inexplicably take...
...overblown, tear-jerking gestures of male-female romances, the car crashes and death caves and Barbra Streisand ballads ("Misty water-colored MEMMM-RIESSSS"), we have the tiny, crabbed, tear-jerking gestures of guyish intimacy: the game of catch, the hand on the shoulder, the locker room's dopey, he-really-likes-you insults. But no pats on the butt! One of the most curious things I've noticed about male weepies is that--in an effort to diffuse even the suggestion of homoeroticism?--they tend to lack sex of any sort. But who needs that old thing when...