Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Pretty Good

One of my all time favorites.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of "The Tempest".I am not sure how much this relies on or strays from "The Tempest", because frankly it is not a play I am terribly familiar with. That probably hinders my ability to critique this film. I suspect the original is not written with pervasive nudity in mind, which I found interesting (and not the least bit distracting).The version I watched was on DVD, but was clearly an awful transfer, possibly from a VHS tape. That is a shame, because the visuals seemed stunning, yet blurred. A better transfer might make me rethink the film ,and probably bump it up a notch or two.

I'm sorry, I have to agree with the bottom feeders on this one. This film is just utter visual crap on a pile of fertilizer. I mean the opening shot is pretty insulting, and not for the feint of heart. Good to know cherubs can perform bodily functions on a swing. And right at the camera no less.I'm reminded of "Hollywood Shuffle", and Robert Townsend's take off the then famous Siske-n-Ebert duo. In Townsend's vignette the two "brothers" rate movies with thumbs up and thumbs down just like Siskel and Ebert. They even give one movie they like the "serious high-five"! Ah, but for the one movie they didn't like? "We give dis movie, the FINGER!"Ayup, and that's kind of how I feel about this scatter brained, ill- conceived, slop-artist hack effort.Oh man, I don't know, this thing reminds me of some of Rob Nilsson's investigative films, only I have no idea what real world crime is being put to the audience, other than the travesty that is this movie.Shakespeare it ain't. Avoid like a pack rabid zombie dogs!

The film is an adaptation of The Tempest, to be sure, but taken to imaginative heights. The photographic imagery is complex and rich, and slowly the story unfolds. Unfortunately, more slowly than necessary.Within many of the scenes is a staggering number of naked people who are no more contributory to the story than any building or fountain. There are numerous glimpses of pages of some of the books, with rapid changes of images, each so quick that they border on the subliminal. Interestingly, some of the arcane images were executed after the time the story was supposed to be taking place.The story of the Prospero-induced storm, and the interactions with the survivors and both Prospero and his daughter are familiar to most, but the plot advances slowly, probably too slowly for many viewers.There is a tradition in some magical philosophies that a magician derives his or her powers directly from whatever magical books he or she possesses, and this was presented in the film, from the play.(Spoiler) At the close of the film, Prospero's books are all destroyed save one. That one was one of Shakespeare's plays -- and the one the film is based on! That was a jarring touch.

Peter Greenaway should stick to directing music videos. Maybe some occasional highbrow porn. But he should never, never, never be allowed to make a feature film.By snipping a few lines of Shakespeare's Tempest, throwing it in a hat and puking it back up on the screen, he's not doing any great service to literature or cinema. By showing obese naked women in very uncomplimentary poses, he's not doing any great service to art. And with his abysmally banal score, he's not doing any great service to music. To whom, then, IS he doing any service? Answer: to the mtv generation kids who are reaching for something slightly more elevated than a 4-minute video. Slightly.We get the standard "Metallica" camera tricks (slow-moving camera on a dolly, panning across incomprehensible scenery). We get the standard Avril Lavigne composition & slow motion fun with mirrors. And we get the Sir-Mix-a-Lot close up booty shots. Baby got back. Baby got fat.I give this a 2/10. The only reason why I don't give it a 1 is because this wasn't as bad as Greenaway's total slop "The Falls".