Posted on 11/10/2007 5:37:30 AM PST by PJ-Comix
Yes, another in a long line of leftwing propaganda movies attacking the EVIL Bush Regime has come out. And it is also another FLOP as you can see in these scathing reviews of "Lions For Lambs" over at ROTTEN TOMATOES. Watching the trailer below, I don't know what creeped me out more: Robert Redford's scary face or the idea of Tom Cruise as a U.S. Senator. So let us now watch the scorching reviews of this tedious propaganda flick in Rotten Tomato Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, noting this flick went in like a Lion and OUT like a Lamb, is in the [brackets]:
"Lions for Lambs simply isn't fresh or courageous enough to make an impact let alone a difference." ---IGN Movies
[Or make a profit at the Box Office.]
"Everyone sits and pontificates. It's one long speech. Too many words." ---FilmsInReview.Com
[And too much of Redford's very scary face.]
"Lame exercise in proscenium dialectics." ---Financial Times
[A pain in the proscenium.]
"Might be a useful tool for stimulating discussion in a high school classroom, as long as the class is studying civics and not cinema." ---Commercial Appeal
[Translation: The movie itself sucks.]
"Rather than reasoned thought and debate, the only thing this movie inspires is exasperation." ---Las Vegas Weekly
[Exasperation that you wasted money and time on this piece of tedium.]
"Pure fence-sitting liberal agony is all that's on offer here, in a muddled and pompous film about America's war on terror." ---Guardian (UK)
[Muddled and pompous? Was Pied Piper Pitt the screenwriter?]
"I had the inescapable feeling that this film ought to come with a warning that it has a lot in common with a NASA wind tunnel." ---Cinema Signals
[Or an Oval Office Monica.]
"It's the role of an artist to not just comment on current events, but also to shape that commentary into a dramatic form that'll excite, move and inspire people. Lions for Lambs isn't filmmaking; it's list-making." ---Philadelphia Weekly
[Put me down on the long list for no-shows.]
"Robert Redford's smug, self-satisfied liberal weltschmerz anthem." ---Film Freak Central
[Oh Say Can You Weltschmerz!]
"...its obvious, liberal message stamp[s] it little more than a Public Service Announcement. I'm Robert Redford and I approve this message." ---Reeling Reviews
[I'm Li'l Beaver and I DISAPPOVE this message.]
"Redford and Carnahan would like us to ponder our role in their fate. And maybe we would, if the lecture weren't so dull and self-satisfied." ---Los Angeles Times
[Straight to DVD and straight to sleep.]
"The movie is a talkathon with a certain amount of military action. It could be presented about as well as a radio play." ---Roger Ebert
[A BORING radio play.]
"Robert Redford's first helming chore in seven years, and his most directly political pic yet, amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new." ---Variety
[Thanx for that Snooze Alert.]
"Robert Redford (who also directed), Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep might just as well have appeared on-screen for a couple of minutes with signs that said, 'War is bad,' and been done with it. Saves everyone the cost of a ticket." ---Arizona Republic
[I've already saved that particular expense.]
"The film doesn't so much end as just stop. We're left thinking less about what we've heard than about what we haven't seen -- a satisfying movie." ---Detroit Free Press
[STOP the movie, I'm getting off!]
"It's missing the movie part of being a movie. And so it sort of just sits there talking." ---Detroit News
[Yakety-yak! Don't come back!]
"It does not feel good to report that a movie with Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise makes the eyelids droop. But that's what Lions for Lambs does." ---Boston Globe
[ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz....]
"What we have here isn't a drama so much as a dramatized position paper in three parts." ---Newsday
[Not exactly a chick flick.]
"Talky, didactic and essentially free of any real narrative..." ---Oregonian
[Like trying to have a conversation with Pied Piper Pitt.]
"Lions for Lambs is insightful and provocative." ---Sacramento Bee
[I hope they at least gave you free popcorn for that.]
(You can watch the mercifully brief trailer for this failed flick over on my DUFU BLOG.)
It probably makes “My Dinner with Andre” look like a Steven Segal flick.
In Before The Afternoon Ping!
The first time I saw this movie advertised, I figured that we were the lions and the Muslim fundamentalists were the lambs and decided I’d skip it.
I agree. Cruise is bad enough, but if Streeps in it you know it's going to be a lecture, not a movie, and Redford just completes the liberal trifecta.
Kid movies are about the only movies I've gone to in quite awhile, and now my kids are old enough that they want to go to movies with their friends, so I'm just a taxi.
But I still wouldn't take them to see garbage like this.
Great DUFU! I’m not surprised the Sacramento Bee is the only positive review. My husband and I decided years ago that any movie the Bee panned was going to be a fun one, and we’d go to those; and any movie the Bee praised was going to be a boring stinker. It worked at least 100% of the time.
“Everyone sits and pontificates. It’s one long speech. Too many words.” -—FilmsInReview.Com
That also describes every “M.A.S.H.” episode written or directed by Alan Alda.
Cruise probably got the idea from his religious experience:
-— The now-disembodied victims’ souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were captured by Xenu’s forces using an “electronic ribbon” and sucked into “vacuum zones” around the world. The captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a “three-D, super colossal motion picture” for thirty-six days. -—
You’re thinking of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, the movie version of the insufferable Garrison Keillor’s fake-folksy public radio show?
You are thinking of A Prairie Home Companion.
Most of them don’t have ten bucks left over from their Starbucks paycheck to donate to this farce. Maybe they can call mommy.
Sounds like Redford will be up for an Oscar, an Emmy and the Nobel Peace Prize.
When it goes to DVD, Cindy Sheehan will no doubt do the introduction.
Dear Robert Stepford,
You are not, and never will be, Mel Gibson. Now sit down and drink a big steaming cup of STFU, m’kay?
Sincerely,
lonevoice
It will be missing the audience part, too.
Get an eyelid lift, like 71-year-old Redford had done, among other scary stuff.
Ooh, baby. That's gonna leave a mark.
I appreciate your confidence, PJ, and I enjoy doing guest DUFUs, but it remains to be seen how often I will be able to pull them off. It's all a question of time availability.
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