tomquick

Ohboy! Taylor, Ives and Newman in their prime. This was supposed to be a Netflix delight.

On paper, as a literary vehicle, maybe. On screen it was cardboard stereotypes playing small personal melodramas. Sound quality very poor, alternately too loud and too soft, and only fully intelligible at high volume. Add to that monologues delivered way too rapidly to be understood, much less comprehended. This play would do better in a small theater with good acoustics. The movie would have done better with a smaller-than-life cast, playing down to the level of the pathetic characters instead of pumping them up into cartoons.

A half hour was enough time spent sucking this bitter pill, and back in the mail whence it came.

I've never had a migraine, only had them described to me. I can't identify but I feel sympathy for the sufferer. This movie was like that, but did not provoke any sympathetic reaction.

Two hours of tedious scenery chewing. Angry yet obtuse dialogue. Gobs of irony spread thick as cake frosting. A string of contrived painful situations involving a berserk Richard Burton, Baptist church ladies, an iguana on a leash, Lolita, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I'm sure it comes across much better on stage. But for me the filmed version came across like the description of a migraine. I had to shut it off for a while out of sheer boredom, then politely heard out the rest of the sufferer's tales.