What a waste of my time!!!

Waste of time

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"Passion Fish", directed and written by John Sayles, is a sturdy very good watch on the whole. I thought there was obviously a lot of thought that had gone into the lead characters plights and what each were struggling through. However, sometimes knit-picking isn't too fun but must be done, and there were 2 different things that brought the movie down from great to good. One was about a 5 minute diatribe that a side-character blathers about "anal-probes". My wife and I were sitting there watching and both looked at each other saying "wth was that", the editor completely asleep at the wheel. And secondly, the ending sort of fizzled. Correct these 2 inconsistencies, and I think the movie was an 8/10. Great job by leads McDownell and Woodard nonetheless, especially McDownell.

Passion Fish (1992)I wish I could like John Sayles films more. They want to be so important and serious, about exceptional people in normal working America. Characters are dying to be felt for and understood, and the turns of events are poignant in simple ways we can relate to.So it is with Passion Fish, with a couple changes. For the first long part of the movie the main character, an ex-soap opera star recently made paraplegic, is completely unlikable. But eventually we come to appreciate her attitude, and other characters arrive, namely a nurse who can stick it out with her.So if all this sounds good, it is. But the writing is a little off, a little wrong, all the way through. Occasionally it's just a strain (I laughed out loud a couple times at it, not with it). There's not problem with the subjects and what they do, but what they say, a hair off key from what such real people would say. Or that's the sense you get. And the filming is adequate without being magical, or emphatic, or whatever it is that great movies pull off. The camera-work, the editing, the clunky addition of sounds, it's all a little crude, as if it didn't matter that it was just functional and used a few cheap devices (like a little montage sequence with snippets dissolving one into another like a sentimental ad). In fact, it has a television quality even though Sayles has never done t.v. as far as I know.If you are really into content, though, and real people with real problems, none of this will matter as much. And the compensations include gritty acting, which makes the most of the dialog. If this lack of style is your style, you'll like it. If you want formal intentions of any kind you might think it's slow and unartful.

You can write the best scripts, pronounce their promise with great dialogues, but without direction, you will never extract lifelike realism, sensibility and made those qualities accessible in superb performance presented here.This movie has it all. One of the things I treasure the most and mind you, I know I keep repeating myself again and again - that be a great atmosphere. Atmosphere in this movie is ravishing. Locations are not overused for any other purpose but to remain the stage of this charming story.Relationship between May-Alice and Chantelle has relaxed and profound feeling about finer things of life. Shear simplicity of this approach is risky for mass audience, but for the connoisseur of finer realism, it is a pure joy. One thing is for certain: If you can't detect those virtues, you will at least fulfill your boredom early in the movie and look elsewhere. Preparation of actors is excellent from beginning toward the end. To tell you the truth, nitpicking wont do you any good here, because I really can't find anything wrong with this movie. I would simply, again and again, soak the lifelike presence of the main characters and enjoy this movie. My utmost respect goes to John Sayles for outstanding results with Passion Fish.

This film could have been made in Hollywood with a similar cast and similar setting, and it would have been awful.But in the hand's of Sayles it's another gem. All his usual characteristics are there in a slow, well-written story. Not overly sentimental, despite the feel-good ending. This is good stuff.