Word: triteness
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...best movies. In the past Altman has let art flow from life: he has allowed his characters to operate spontaneously and then permitted his films' meanings to grow out of the crazy-quilt action. This time around he has done the reverse. The characters are constricted by a trite, preconceived moral and soon become inanimate pawns in a pseudointellectual shell game. Quin tet is designed to stimulate superficial cocktail party chatter rather than to provoke an audience's hearts or minds. Altman has toyed with this method once before, in the disastrous denouement of the otherwise vivid...
Except for the fact that Dave ends up killing his father--who deserves it--there is nothing extraordinary about the plot; it's just like countless fairy tales. At times it even seems trite. Dave, the handsome gypsy, takes up with Susan, a rich blonde American girl. Dave, the dark and mysterious gypsy, dreams of California. And, typically, neither the romance nor the emigration can ever come to pass. Although Groffo's hired killers botch their job, they manage to gash Dave's face. Susan is too horrified to help and not gypsy enough to understand. Dave turns to Sharon...
...uppermost and lowermost registers were rendered with astounding lucidity. More importantly, his fine sense for the subtle lyricism of Mozart was obvious, especially in the second movement, and throughout the piece he allowed the music to express itself with such subtlety that it did not sound stale or trite. In short, his performance was a credit to his instrument and to the composer...
...anyone who turns the Battle of Helm's Deep into nothing more than a Cowboys and Indians scene, complete with Gunsmoke music and Gandalf as John Wayne leading the rescue. Maybe that's all the book is, essentially, but Bakshi seems to exaggerate that which is formulaic and even trite in the books. Moreover, his animations are wooden and lazy -- groups of figures will stand without moving while a battle rages around them. The synch of the lips and sound falters and only for brief moments can you forget that this thing is a cartoon. Bakshi superimposes animation and live...
Thank you, Frank Rich, for your indictment of Erma Bombeck. Her humor is trite, repetitious and chauvinistic. It is frightening that such a recipe can be mistaken for genuine satire...