lepoisson-1

Hopefully you can find a decent print. The copy you can download for free (public domain) from the Internet archive isn't too bad.

What you should know:

) It's entertainingly bad. Really entertaining and really bad.

) A main theme of the movie is the Goddess Venus being a loose woman (not a spoiler).

) It's poorly dubbed from Italian

) We were confused a lot (yes, my wife watched it too).

) The little man's dubbed voice often sounded like Grep Proops of "Whose Line is it Anyway." It also sounded a lot like what Greg would say as a parody.

) The God Neptune looked like an exhausted junkie.

) The scene where Vulcan is carrying the little man by his belt and the little man is having a tantrum is worth sitting through the entire movie.

) When the little man clonks a downed warrior with his club, he says "Bonk!" or "Ding Dong!"

) When the barbarians attack Vulcan, they do it serially so each one can get beaten up; I guess it never occurred to them to gang up

) Etc.

I saw this in the fifth grade in 1965. What made me suddenly remember it? Who knows...but I watched it again last night, and it is still an excellent "hands on" demonstration and explanation of basic physics concepts that could not be duplicated in the classroom.

Would today's kids sit still long enough to watch this black-and-white film? I hope so, but I doubt it. No flashing colors, no music, no children participating, no dancing, no quick edits (when you watch, notice how long the camera shots are).

I could imagine Monty Python having a field day with this thing.

Highly recommended for any science kid you have in the household.

Actually, it would probably be pretty disappointing even if we hadn't seen the British version.

The British version is laugh-out-loud / stop-the-video-to-recover hilarious even when you don't know British culture. We watched the first two episodes of the American version and it's just dumb slapstick and shouting.

Check out the British version on youtube (especially after Rob Brydon became the host starting in series 3)...it's worth 10 stars.

I tend to be sucker for foreign movies (especially French ones), since they often don't follow the American "feel good" formula. Based on the IMDb ratings, we borrowed this from the library.

Here's what we got:

Great photography and scenes of Paris, which always goes over well.

Great music.

Parallels to Biblical writings.

A bunch of flat, undeveloped characters about whom we did not care.

A beautiful young woman who falls in love with an old man in spite of a complete language barrier

A very slow moving movie that we kept hoping would go somewhere...anywhere.

Maybe we're just not sophisticated enough?

4 stars because the acting was good, the photography was good, and the music was good.

Beware! This review contains spoilers

Level set: I'm an engineer, enjoy silent films and early photography, and used to repair clocks and other mechanical equipment professionally. I think steam locomotives are really cool. I don't speak French well, but I love Paris.

That said, I really enjoyed this movie in spite of its length, mechanical engineering problems, and unabashed schmaltz. I loved the historical movie reenactments; the Paris vignettes, and the train wreck dream sequence (based on the Montparnasse 22 October 1895 accident). The cinematography was spectacular, especially if you're into mechanics and technical photography.

Was the movie trailer misleading? You betcha! The trailer made this look like another Harry Potter flick; it barely even mentioned Georges Méliès, and it was Méliès about whom the entire plot revolved. Back when my kids were 10 and 12, I bet they would have wiggled and squirmed uncontrollably.

For me, it was an 8 star movie, but I'm only giving it 5 stars for the misleading advertising.

I like foreign movies, and I realize that since I rely on subtitles, I often miss the humor a native speaker might appreciate. I know nothing of Machulskiego; I found the DVD at the library and it looked interesting, so I figured I should give it a try.

Much of the movie is the planning of the crime and the character conflicts; it's not a 100% action movie. I like this: it makes the actual crime and getaway that much more exciting, and it reminded me of the original Italian Job (a favorite). The problem was that I didn't really like or dislike any of the characters. Will they pull it off? Will the bad guys (whichever ones you decide they are) get it in the end? Will a romance happen? I just didn't care.

The acting was good. The cinematography was good. I didn't shut if off.

5 stars.

Contains major spoilers.

People have been totally slamming this movie, and I don't feel that's completely fair, since the photography is pretty good. OK, so the acting (if you can call it that: it's more like reciting lines) is wooden. The screen-writing is hilarious, and not because this is supposed to be a comedy (or was it? I've seen this three times and I'm still not sure). Maybe it's supposed to be British humor, where all absurd situations get treated as if it were normal:

Example 1: Doc's girlfriend falls in love with Billy, and Doc appears upset but doesn't display any emotion.

Example 2: Doc shoots Garrett's friends, and Garrett says - with a straight face - something akin to "this isn't going to help our friendship".

Oh yes - and the music is sometimes vaudevillian comedy style, usually at inappropriate times.

I've usually limited my bad movie watching to science fiction or drama...and now I can add a Western to the mix.

Highly recommended.

*** contains a spoiler ***

The juggler, the bike rider, and the accordion player (vaudevillian acts - completely unrelated to the plot - added to make the movie longer) were really good. The acting, dialogue, and screen writing all compete for last place. The deep philosophical discussions the Siamese twin sisters have are laughable. The dream sequence is everything you don't want to see in a movie and more. This movie is dumb enough that it becomes funny.

Perhaps the sisters could really sing, but the sound was of such horrible quality that you couldn't tell (it was difficult to understand much of the dialogue too, not that it mattered). Adding even more to the low budget feel was the huge piece of dust caught in the upper left corner for the first few minutes.

*** spoiler *** And the judge talking to you at the end is the frosting on the cake. They don't make them like this any more...thank Goodness!

I do not understand how people found this movie scary or even vaguely engaging. The script, acting and effects all compete for last place. If I had been young enough to be scared by this, I would have been put off by the mushy parts. What age group was this aimed at? Were we really that unsophisticated in 1960?

Spoilers (coincidentally also known as my favorite parts): The screaming detached head. The crashed wedding where the spirit wilts the flowers. The guide dog which leads in random directions with respect to the blind woman. The cool talking ship captain.

It just gets better as it progresses. Set the bar low and prepare to be entertained. Ed Woods would be proud!

Having enjoyed Plan 9 many times and Glen or Glenda once, I really expected this to be a serious turkey...and it wasn't! It's not overly good, but (since it came before Plan 9) I had ASSUMED Ed Wood had used this as a movie making dress rehearsal. Wrong! Lugosi is great! Tor Johnson is certainly more believable here than in Plan 9.

It's a dumb movie with a dumb monster and dumb effects, but it works...almost. It's a fun watch: grab some popcorn and your buddies, set the bar low, and enjoy. Lugosi's performance makes me wonder what Plan 9 would have been like had he lived beyond 3 days into Plan 9's filming.

We saw this on the local access cable channel the other night, and we had a very hard time understanding the dialog. Judging from somebody else's review, it appears the film transfer was very low quality and the problem was not the fault of the cable company (which makes sense, since the next movie we watched sounded fine). Even ignoring the audio problems, this just isn't a great movie.

I always wonder what happened when you see someone like Anthony Quinn doing in a grade B movie...maybe it looked a lot better as a script. The overly melodramatic predictable ending was tough on the stomach.

Oh yes...could somebody please explain to me why shooting out a power line on a gondola tower would cause the bolts that hold the gondola to the cable to fail? Did I sleep though something important?

Levelset: I am a 55 year old programmer geeky type (mainframe assembler and UNIX, thanks for asking). I love good and bad science fiction movies. Tron 1 was a simple minded excuse for a lot of really impressive effects, and so was Tron 2. The plots are basically identical with a few very predictable twists, but it doesn't matter because nobody goes to Tron for intellectual stimulation. Tron 2's storyline was REALLY barfacious (Tron 1's plot simply qualifies as "lame"), but the visuals more than made up for it.

If you enjoy great affects and can deal with an embarrassingly sappy Disney plot, this is your cup of tea.

Serious spoiler follow-up: Will Quorra get a green card or just become part of the underground economy?

This is an extremely silly movie with terrible acting (hard to imagine Jane Fonda acting that poorly) and an equally terrible script. The effects are cheesy and sometimes unnecessarily long (the dream room sequence comes to mind: how long is Jane going to walk in front of psychedelic displays before something happens?). The story line is ridiculous. The space ship looks like something made by a third grader. I could go on…

Oh yes, don't forget the music! Personally, I feel the 60s was an era of both tremendously creative and embarrassingly bad music; I'll let you guess which category Barbarella's soundtrack falls into…

Why did I give this movie three stars? (update: this movie really is terrible so it should get a 1. I bow to local peer pressure). It's so bad it's really great. This isn't your grandmother's "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians": when was the last time you saw a dumb sci-fi flick with a really hot actress who just can't seem to keep those skin tight space suits on her body? If you get bored between breast shots (which could easily happen), try counting the phallic symbols.

Have a few beers (better yet, a smoke), get together with your male buddies, and watch a movie Ed Wood would be proud of.

This is one of those movies that has an embarrassingly bad plot for no reason (and some really dumb comedy), but who cares? It's a time capsule of music, dance, and corny comedy videos from the 50s, filmed in a kindler, gentler manner where you could actually watch the musicians perform and see the entire dancer's body (I've never understood why dance videos and current dance shows spend so much time showing everything but the dancer. If somebody's doing tap, I really like to see the camera shot include the feet..).

It's low budget. The version I saw (on the local access channel) had serious audio sync problems (when the audio was Frankie Lymon was singing "I'm not a Juvenile Delinquent" I'm wasn't sure if they pasted it over the correct film). None of this mattered: I really enjoyed it, and will continue to enjoy it the way my kids enjoy their music videos.

OK, I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for dance movies (I'm a mediocre male dancer). I've sat through some horrendous movies in spite of bad reviews just to see the dance scenes (i.e I saw Center Stage on the big screen). I was bored the other night, and this came on the public access channel, so I gave it a shot.

The opening dream sequence sets the initial height (high? low?) of the schlock bar, properly preparing you for the predictable and atrocious plot and screen writing. I really didn't care for any of the characters (except Arthur Treacher and Louise Beavers as butler and maid: they were adorable, especially with the ice cream). There was a unique dance number with "mechanical" dancers, and the final "climatic" dance-singing routine (oops! Was that a spoiler?). The music was downright mediocre (that was supposed to be the point of this movie, right?).

There's not really much to recommend. If you see it on DVD, catch the dances.

This movie is an awesome production from start to finish. When there's a mob scene, it's a full tilt mob. The "Court of Miracles" is really populated by hundreds of Paris' "down and outs." Watching the hunchback navigate the façade of Notre Dame is breathtaking. Universal spared nothing making this picture, and it shows. And of course, Lon Chaney as the hunchback was both believable and repulsive.

I cannot add much that hasn't already been said. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough, from viewpoints of both historical importance and pure entertainment. Finally, I recommend checking out Charles Laughton as the hunchback in the 1939 version; it too is a superb interpretation of Hugo's novel.

Or possibly "bad judgment," since that seems to be what every character uses whenever making a decision. There is a wonderfully written thread documenting problems and unanswered questions, and you should definitely read it if you've seen the movie and/or if you don't mind spoilers.

This little beauty is camp from the opening talking heads and it just keeps gets better! Vincent Price is pretty cool. The acting is pretty good. The ending is entertaining, and I understand they did a stunt in the theaters to make it more so (again, documented elsewhere, but could be a spoiler).

This is not a great movie, but we knew that going in. It was fun to watch.

As others have said on the messages boards (and I won't refer to them to avoid spoilers), there were a lot of plot problems in this movie, but it didn't matter. The basic premise is absurd: an important CEO, photographed with a young supermodel, tries to convince his wife that the supermodel is really dating the commoner (who works as a valet) who just happened to be walking past when the picture was taken. The CEO pays the valet to pose as the supermodel's boyfriend, the wife doesn't buy it, and things progress from there. The valet is a nice guy who is down and out, but doing the best he can with what he was given; the CEO is a bad guy: in an American movie, you could guess the outcome, but this is a French movie, so you're on your own!

On a side note, Francis Veber also wrote and directed Le dîner de cons, which we found very disappointing after enjoying La Doublure.

Francis Veber wrote and directed La Doublure, which was cute, creative, light and fun, so we figured Veber's Le dîner de cons would be another winner. What a disappointment! The premise had promise. The acting was excellent. The characters worked. The movie flowed somewhat logically, and the ending was great...yet something was terribly wrong. Instead of laughing out loud as we did during La Doublure, we cringed as one stupid thing after another happened to people we didn't like or care about. It wasn't funny: it was embarrassingly dumb. In La Doublure, the main character may have been down and out, but he was a genuinely nice person, and we wanted him to succeed; here, everyone was either rotten or downright dumb. We lost interest in everyone, and thus lost interest in the movie.

Good: A superb car chase (worth the price of admission – they don't make them like that any more), some great fights (again, I don't see that kind of action in modern films), a decent heist, and a couple plot twists I didn't expect. Nice control of camera depth of field. This really could have been a great movie.

Bad: The unappealing characters just sucked the joy out of this movie. Nobody's likable. I didn't like Douglas. I didn't like his wife. I didn't like the circus performer. There's nobody to root for. Also, after the final plot twist, you can predict the rest of the movie and by then I just didn't care.

5 stars for the car chase and fights.

I sure enjoyed it despite the complete lack of explosions or car chases.

Where I'm coming from: I'm a 54 year old male who has danced for 15 years. My girlfriend has danced since she was 3. We don't compete because it would make our relaxing hobby a pressured nightmare (and, frankly, because I'm not very good). My daughter competed and did very well.

Some reviewers apparently missed that this movie is a satire and it's supposed to be dumb and funny. Having sat through more competitions than I can count, I can state this movie hits the nail on the head. The parents, the kids, the beginners, the prima donnas...it's all true. Yes, it's really campy and schmaltzy, the plot has holes you could drive a truck through, the acting is sometimes marginal, but we both enjoyed it and laughed out loud.

And what's the best part of this movie? The dancing. It is photographed and edited such that you can really see and enjoy the dancing without having constant cutaways to the judges or the audience (as in current American TV dance competitions. I don't know about you, but I watch dance shows for the dancing).

There are no deep plot twists to be analyzed, no characters I need to understand better...but we definitely plan to watch this again because the dancing is really good.

If you liked this, you will enjoy Best in Show.

Even after all these years, Magical Mystery Tour still ranks as one of the worst I've ever sat through. OK, it had the Beatles in it (but you already knew that). OK, the soundtrack is fantastic (but you already knew that). And Magical Mystery Tour is 1967 wildly creative (but you probably already knew that). I won't gush on about how groundbreaking the Beatles were time after time (again, you already knew that). I love their music and other movies.

Magical Mystery Tour is unfathomably awful. It has the look and feel of a home movie, and like most home movies, it's pointless, except perhaps as an example of pure self indulgence by a bunch of rich spoiled musicians. It's bad - really bad, but it isn't fun bad like Plan 9 from Outer Space. I saw Magical Mystery Tour in college at a bar, where they put a pitcher of cheap draft in front of you and then started the 16mm projector. I'm not sure during which part I downed the beer, but it didn't help.

The full Beatles group never released a less than stellar LP (or if they did, I've never heard of it), although "Two Virgins" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono is arguably the vinyl equivalent to this drek.

Update 12.14.2012

At least 35 years have elapsed since I sat in that bar. I just watched the fascinating "Making of Magical Mystery Tour" documentary on PBS and then the lovingly restored version of the Magical Mystery Tour...and it still stinks, and the soundtrack is still fantastic.

I am trying to imagine a room full of Suits screening this movie and approving it for release.

The stupid theme song is annoyingly catchy. I'll probably be humming it for weeks.

This was amusing and fun, and I really liked the adult Martian headgear, part of which looks amazingly akin to the flexible gas pipe that connects my clothes dryer to the supply line.

There are far worse movies than this. The worst movie I've ever seen was Nukie, every minute of which was pure pain. If you really like BAD movies, check out Nukie...but you must make it to the ending, which is truly worth it.

Some bad movies are funny. Some bad movies are so confusing they become a personal challenge to decipher. Some bad movies are so bad they're good. Some bad movies are just pure entertainment. Nukie is none of the above. This is positively the worst movie I have ever seen. The "friend" who lent it to me made me promise I'd watch to the bitter end. Let the world know I endured the entire Nukie (and the ending almost made it worthwhile).

Nukie is a painful experience. How could this be written? How could this be directed and filmed? I pass this as a warning...every second of this movie is unwatchable. I certainly wouldn't let my kids watch it - they'd get nightmares.

I don't understand the reviewers here that gave this movie a positive rating, unless maybe they had a copy to dump. This movie doesn't even sell on EBAY when listed for 99 cents. 'Nuff said?

And lots of camera work from above. Yeah! Take it off!

Oops. Sorry. Lost my place. I'm not in a scuzzy bar; I'm watching a network movie.

Camera zooms that pull the eyeballs from your sockets (not to mention dinner from your stomach). Cliché scripting that must have been written by teenagers. Atrocious acting. Bad government officials who won't believe anything is wrong after 3 cities get flattened. And it only gets better! We actually laughed out loud several times. I can't wait for part 2...

And then, after about an hour…what's that quiet grinding noise? It sounds like it's right here in the room with me, and I don't even have surround sound! Oh my goodness, it IS in the room with me! It's my girlfriend snoring. Apparently she uses her time more wisely than I do.

1 star.

I wonder what Category 8 will be like…not to mention Godzilla vs Category 9, et cetera.

****Quick follow-up after watching Part 2 (you can read the other reviews for movie details and spoilers if you can't handle the suspense):

What a blast! The corny ending was even more barfacious that we predicted. And my girlfriend fell asleep again.

I do question CBS's judgment airing this so soon after Katrina and Rita. Those still suffering may not be impressed with FEMA patting itself on the back the way it did in this movie.