The Worst Film Ever

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

I decided to watch this movie after reading Leonard Maltin's "151 Best Movies You've Never Seen". However, despite the film's inclusion on his list, I was not very impressed. Much of it is probably because I was a history teacher...and the film is rife with anachronisms. The problem is that the writer inserted 21st century sensibilities into a story set in the 18th century....which might make folks today feel good but which simply is bad history.The story finds a feisty woman (WHY are they always so feisty in these stories??) who doesn't want to marry a man her family is picked out for her...even though that WAS how rich folks married back in the day. Marriage contracts were meant to solidify fortunes....and yet this woman complains about not having any choice. Back then the choices were simple...marry who your family picked out for you or spend your life in a convent. She also was big into screaming about inequality...more a late 19th early 20th century sort of beef. As for Casanova, he's portrayed as a highly enlightened man...whereas the real Casanova was hardly this enlightened (read up on him sometime...he was into sex with children and slaves, among other things). And, it's everyone else around these two who are essentially idiots. Add to that a terrible scene involving a miniature balloon that would make physics teachers angry and you've got a film which pays very little attention to the realities of life in 18th century Venice. About the only nice thing I can say about this out of time film is the look of Venice...it is lovely and the director and camera person both did very well in this sense. Otherwise, a dull and silly story with little to recommend it.

This is a lovely little feel-good film featuring a bunch of memorable performances from Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller (and a particularly brilliant one from Jeremy Irons), among others. The films offers a rather playful take on the life of the notorious womanizer Giacomo Casanova and tells us about his one true love, a strong-headed Venetian lady with feministic views, and the pains that the 18th century libertine takes to possess her, as a ruthless inquisitor, appointed by the pope, tries to execute him on the charges of heresy. A guilty pleasure of sorts with little historical significance, Casanova is nonetheless a must watch for the late Heath Ledger fans!For more on the world of cinema, please visit my film blog "A Potpourri of Vestiges".

Heath Ledger was pretty as always (well, except as the Joker)but the movie was a very long sit-com. Very, very long. If I had been in a theater watching it, I would never have made it through in one sitting. This is the kind of movie you watch on DVD, pause and come back to later. May I suggest a better interpretation of it--the TV miniseries starring David Tennant (yes, Doctor Who) as the young Casanova and Peter O'Toole as Old Casanova, reliving his memories. I don't know how accurate it is to the REAL Casanova, but it was much better--much sexier. You really believed Tennant as Casanova. Ledger was....very pretty and nice to look at--he was a model in this and quite flat in his affect.

A friend lent me this film, and after a hard day, I decided to watch it, and boy, what a perfect antidote it was! It is a farce in the true British, and dare I say, Shakespearian, tradition, and contained great performances all around, especially from Heath Ledger, Oliver Platt, and Omid Djalili, but that is to take nothing away from the other actors, who all played their parts wonderfully well - I did not even mind Sienna Miller, so I must have enjoyed it! Okay, so it would never win awards, if you are looking for a light, easy going film, that does not tax the brain too much, then this could be the one for you! One thing I cannot understand, is the US rating for the film. It is in no way offensive, and I would not hesitate in letting a child of say 9 or 10 watch it.