Review: "Unfaithful" movie stinks!

self | May 10, 2002 | Daniel Wiener

[GSWarrior]

Like I am going to see this movie!

Well, the 8-year-old son, played by Erik Per Sullivan, was very cute.
Malcolm in the Middle bump.

[Pining_4_TX]

Perhaps I'm just an old prude, but today's movie sex scenes bother me a great deal. Nothing is private any more. I don't see the difference between watching this stuff on the screen and watching through your neighbor's window. There are hardly any movies one can take the whole family to see.

Speaking of bad movies - I've seen the previews of the new animated film about the wild stallion, and from what I can tell, all the white men are evil animal abusers, and the Native Americans are kind, gentle animal lovers. I'll pass.

[Paul Atreides]

It is no wonder the plot sounds like a retooled Fatal Attraction....it is directed by the same director, Adrian Lyne.

[MarkWar]

There's no real suspense.
The plot moves at a glacial pace.
The characters do stupid things for no good reasons.
Instead of caring about the main characters, you just kind of feel soiled and embarrassed by them, and vaguely apprehensive about what mistakes they'll make next.

Hey, for the exact same experience, just head down to the video store and rent:

At least you'll have Michelle Pfeiffer to look at...

Mark W.

[kaylar]

Saw the previews for that. Wal Mart is already filled with tie-in toys. Maybe the 12 year old girl part of the population will like it, but I thought it looked unbearably dumb.

Only 7 months and 1 week til Two Towers. That and Spider-Man are the only things I plan to see this year.

[DoughtyOne]

For the life of me, I can't understand what would be the point of going to see a movie that painfully portrays the destruction of a family. Watching someone's wife soil herself with another man isn't entertainment to me. If I want sex I can find the real thing, I don't need to see it denegrated in this manner.

Is this supposed to be edifying? Is it supposed to be enlightening? Is it supposed to be an offering of eroticism?

Well, needless to say I don't need your review to know that I won't be wasting my time on this junk. But I do think you've made it clear for anyone who might entertain the thought of viewing this tripe. Let's hope they're listening. As far as I am concerned Richard can take his collective movie efforts and stuff them where the sun don't shine. I had thought Diane Lane had a little more sense than to involve herself in this type of stuff. Evidently I was wrong.

[BibChr]

Thing is, going in, you have to PAY ME to see movies about adultery. And then I skip the movie and see Lord of the Rings again anyway. (c8

Dan

[dpwiener]

Hey, for the exact same experience, just head down to the video store and rent What Lies Beneath.
At least you'll have Michelle Pfeiffer to look at...

Diane Lane's not bad to look at either...

I thought "What Lies Beneath" was an okay movie. The plot had some real suspense, and was purposeful (albeit slow-paced). Harrison Ford was able to convey at least a semi-plausible motivation for his character's actions.

So if you hated "What Lies Beneath" and I thought it was okay, but I hated "Unfaithful", that should tell you something about the latter's relative merits.

[BluesDuke]

What Lies Beneath was a good - not great, but good - film, nuanced and expressive in its way, which was murdered by a Fatal Attraction-like finish. As for Unfaithful, I have seen the reviews being 50/50, so far, but I will wait until I have seen it, which I plan to, since I like the idea of teaming Richard Gere and Diane Lane - their styles as they have matured (Gere can be a remarkably focused actor now, as compared to his earliest career in which he was far more style than substance; Lane given the chance can make even a despicable character seem oddly humane) in their craft make the prospect interesting.

[dpwiener]

As for Unfaithful, I have seen the reviews being 50/50, so far, but I will wait until I have seen it, which I plan to, since I like the idea of teaming Richard Gere and Diane Lane

I'll be interested in hearing your opinion of it. At the end of the free screening (which they assured us was the final cut, except for fixing some minor technical problems such as when the sound cut out for a second or two), there was pretty much a dead silence from the audience. My impression was that virtually everyone shared a sense of relief that the movie was finally over with.

So I was surprised that the studio was able to extract a number of favorable quotes from various movie reviews, for use in the newspaper ads. Of course the quotes tended to focus on the acting of the movie's stars, which I'll concede wasn't bad; they were merely overwhelmed by the excruciatingly boring script.

[Calvin Locke]

Is this a remake of TS Garp?

[dpwiener]

Is this a remake of TS Garp?

No, this is a pseudo-remake of La Femme Infidele (The Unfaithful Wife), but apparently without any of the good points of the original. Here is script review and comparison that I found.

[Maceman]

If I were a movie critic, I would use the "Watch" system instead of the star system. One watch symbol for each time I looked at my watch during the movie.

The more watches at the end of my review, the worse the movie. I remember Nashville being an "8" watcher. Actually, it might have deserved more, but I walked out on it after the first twenty hours or so were over with no apparent end in sight.

[occam's chainsaw]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Why pay to help Hollywood glamorize adultery?

[TexasNative2000]

Lane given the chance can make even a despicable character seem oddly humane)

She's quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses. She conveys vulnerability without innocence, which is tough to do.

[martin_fierro]

Yawn. Another Richard Gere movie nobody cares about.

[NYCVirago]

As for Unfaithful, I have seen the reviews being 50/50, so far, but I will wait until I have seen it, which I plan to, since I like the idea of teaming Richard Gere and Diane Lane - their styles as they have matured (Gere can be a remarkably focused actor now, as compared to his earliest career in which he was far more style than substance; Lane given the chance can make even a despicable character seem oddly humane) in their craft make the prospect interesting.

I was watching "An Officer and a Gentleman" again a few weeks ago, when it was on cable. Gere gave a really remarkable performance in that film, especially with the love scenes. Apparently he and Debra Winger couldn't stand each other, but you'd never know it from watching the movie.

[ValerieUSA]

I saw the reviews for "Unfaithful" and that stupid horse movie when we saw "Spiderman" last weekend. Neither movie looked any good at all -- but that horse movie really made me cringe. It's gotta be AWFUL.

[ValerieUSA]

I was totally caught up in What Lies Beneath. I'm a real wimp at scary movies and rarely watch them. But when the movie was over and I stoped the panic, I started to laugh. The endless chase and suspense at the end was so overdone that it could have been camp. It was like a healthy, robust, opera singer belting out her final death song, then apparently dying, then bursting out in song again, then dying, then singing... on and on until you just want her to "DIE ALREADY!"