To Be the Best
To Be the Best
| 02 August 1992 (USA)
To Be the Best Trailers

The Barbara Taylor Bradford trilogy that began with A Woman of Substance ends with this epic tale! Paula O' Neill feuds with her cousins as she fights to save her grandmother's business-and struggles to salvage her marriage.

Reviews
VividSimon

Simply Perfect

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Robert Joyner

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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Sammy-Jo Cervantes

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

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Logan

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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David Holt (rawiri42)

After watching the previous two episodes in this trilogy, I wouldn't have even known this was IN the series were it not for the character names! Jenny Seagrove was BRILLIANT as Emma Harte and very good as Paula O'Neill but, for some reason (and I strongly suspect that she, herself declined this third part! I would have!) as another commentator has already asked, why on earth was an American actress cast as an English businesswoman?Of particular interest though was the continuity not better adhered to between episodes? In Hold the Dream (the second in the series) There is an excellent close-up of Emma Harte's grave where the inscription reads, "In loving memory of Emma Harte Lowther-Ainsley who died 15th Jan 1986 aged 80 years. Sadly Missed by All" whilst, in this film there is also a very good close-up of her gravestone with the inscription, "I loving memory of Emma Harte 1889 - 1970". If the producers can't do better than this, then perhaps they are in the wrong business! Mind you, after this long, perhaps they HAVE found their true calling - and it won't be in filmmaking!Whilst the first episode "A Woman of Substance" was a classic British production (and, by the way, still the biggest audience record-holder for Channel 4 in England), this final episode is more like a pretty poor version of "Days of OUr Lives" or "The Bold and the Beautiful"!By the way, just in passing, does anyone else think that Jenny Seagrove is a double of Elizabeth Montgomery (of "Bewitched" fame)? I wonder if Jenny can wiggle her nose!

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sexy_pisces_gal

The legend of Emma Hart continues in this third instalment of Barbara Taylor BradfordÂ's smash hit To Be The Best.It leaves the simple but breathtaking views of Yorkshire behind and settles amongst the glamour, corruption, and power, in Tokyo.It has been some years since the beautiful and immensely powerful Paula O'Neil (now played by Lindsay Wagner) banished her traitor cousins Sarah Lowther (Claire Oberman) and Jonathon Ainsley (Christopher Cazenove) from the powerful Harte family for cheating her beloved grandmothers world dominating empire. But now she faces fresh threats from her vindictive and egotistical cousins, Jonathon has his sights set on claiming a considerable amount of the Hartes shares and it seems that no-one will prevent him from owning the family empire he was excluded from.Also starring Anthony Hopkins as Jack Figg, Paula's head of security. To Be The Best promises to be one of the best sequels ever created from the hand of a truly inspirational novelist.

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Stacey Woods

After watching A Woman of Substance and Hold the Dream, this final installment was a bitter let down. I don't know why Jenny Seagrove was not in this, but the usually excellent Lindsay Wagner was on auto-pilot as Paula O'Neill and Anthony Hopkins was wasted in a pointless role. Can you tell I didn't like it yet?!?A wafer-thin plot, totally ignoring the best parts of BTB's book and a decidedly dicky script did not redeem this - well, I don't know what to call it really.The whole thing also looks very dated, even though it was only filmed in 1992 - it looks more like '82 to me!I would advise people who have read the books to stick to the books and the first two mini-series and avoid this one like the plague!

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Dynapink

True, Barbara Taylor Bradford is not a great writer. In fact, the Harte trilogy is the only body of her work I've liked at all. And this, the conclusion, is certainly not one of the better books in the series.That said, however, the book is far better than this piece of junk adaptation. Lindsay Wagner is about as miscast as anyone could possibly get (and that's even without counting an American playing a British character), the plot bears no resemblance to anything it was based on, and Anthony Hopkins gets second billing (and lots of screen time) playing a character who was only in the book for about five lines. What a letdown.

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