What’s ironic about that is that LET THEM ALL TALK is mostly improvisation. the credited screenwriter had a beat sheet and director Steven Soderbergh let the actors provide the dialogue.
And the result: a boring movie with uninteresting dialogue and scenes that lasted for five minutes that should have lasted for two.
Where is the respect for those “perfect words?
The movie stars Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen. Candice steals the movie, primarily because she was the only character that had a real drive. Wiest was there to play Monopoly with Bergen.
Most of the film takes place aboard the QE2 as it crosses the Atlantic from New York to London. Soderbergh filmed on the ship during the cruise (prior to the pandemic of course). And he shot the film on the fly.
I’ve read a number of interviews where the cast praised the process and how much fun it was. Fun for them but not the audience.
How would actors like it if we writers just took starring roles ourselves? No training, no talent, but who cares? If we wear the right costume and are lit properly that’s all that matters. Anybody can act, as I’m sure many actors believe anyone can write.
The difference is writers KNOW they can’t act at the level required to star in a motion picture. Many actors think they could write better than writers.
I went to see the reaction on Rotten Tomatoes and found yet another disconnect between critics and viewers. On the critics’ scale there was 90% approval. “Oh, it’s so brilliant.” Among the public the Rotten Tomatoes scare was 50%. Talk about a big discrepancy.
I think it was Hitchcock who said, “Movie are life if you took out the boring parts.” There were lots of boring parts. The movie takes almost two hours to tell several very minor stories.
The title is LET THEM ALL TALK And that’s all they do. The title should be LET WRITERS TELL THEM WHAT TO SAY. They'd have a way better movie.
from By Ken Levine
Comments
Post a Comment