Representative of the other critics, who gave The Slugger's Wife a collective 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Janet Maslin of the New York Times called the movie "resoundingly unfunny."įast, expensive cars raced in an underground world of illegal street racing by a rogues' gallery of cocky, tight-knit characters - those elements are just part of what made the Fast and the Furious franchise so irresistible and lucrative. And then, in this so-called romantic comedy, most of the rest of the movie concerns the couple resenting each other. She isn't quite ready to settle down and quit singing (which she'd have to do for some reason), but he is, especially since Debby proves to be his "good luck charm" as he approaches breaking baseball's single-season home run record. Michael O'Keefe ( Caddyshack) plays pro baseball player and confirmed bachelor Darryl who falls in love with rock singer Debby (Rebecca De Mornay). In 1985, Simon wrote The Slugger's Wife directly for the screen. Among his most popular projects: The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, and Brighton Beach Memoirs. Working primarily as a playwright, his works - gently funny, character studies about couples and families - were big hits, both on Broadway and when adapted to film. Neil Simon was one of America's best and most influential writers in the middle of the 20th century. "Why, exactly, would you want to make a movie about racist hate groups," Roger Ebert rhetorically asked in his Chicago Sun-Times review, "and then disguise it as family entertainment about a cute dog?" Critics loathed Top Dog, which wound up with a 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Top Dog is supposed to appeal to kids, but it's also casually and extremely violent, with a plot about extremist bombings. The result is Top Dog, where Norris plays the cliched cop who plays by his own rules who gets teamed up with a super-smart police canine. But Norris' style of movie had grown passé, so filmmakers tried to open things up a bit by placing the not remotely humorous or family-friendly actor into what's supposed to be a family comedy. The success of Missing in Action and The Delta Force would eventually lead to Norris playing a mystical, kick-happy lawman on the '90s action show Walker, Texas Ranger, which in turn led to a revival of his by-then moribund film career. In the early 1980s, Chuck Norris was the king of a certain kind of movie - patriotic war movies where its star could bomb, shoot, and karate kick bad guys. In that sense, it's his most relatable performance in years. If he would wink at the camera and have a good time in the vein of fellow slumdog thespian Nicolas Cage, it could make for a fun and campy time. Instead, he looks pissed off to be there. There is no artistry here - you know it, the filmmakers know it, and Bruce Willis knows it more than anyone. They drive speedboats, they shoot guns, they collect paychecks. It's a film completely incapable of transporting the viewer into its world, leaving you constantly aware that you're watching actors going through the motions. Precious Cargo tries its best to be a movie, but never stops looking like a bland and dull production. Principally focusing on Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Claire Forlani as they knock off an armored car full of precious jewels, the movie. Writing for, the critic Peter Sobczynski described this action movie as a "VOD craptacular" that proves forgettable within minutes after watching it. And that's fair - if you generally don't think about movies, talk about movies, or watch movies, then sure, the movie is fine. Everyone else? Stay far away, capiche? In an effort to combat its 0 percent favorability among critics, producers of the film rolled out an ad campaign claiming ( quite spuriously) that it's not a movie for critics, but rather something general audiences would enjoy. If Gotti ends up being remembered at all in the future, it will likely be due only to the movie's pugilistic and manipulative marketing tactics. It's a movie made by people who don't know how to make movies, but it confusingly just happens to have a movie star as its lead.īizarrely edited and difficult to follow, the movie is essentially a long collection of technically uninteresting scenes, stitched together with voiceover and real-life archival news footage into something that only sometimes looks like a film. Aside from a few moments of high camp, such as Travolta's Gotti limply slap-fighting his sons over a bar-brawl homicide, there's not very much to chuckle at here. Gotti's greatest sin is that it's incredibly boring.
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