Moll Flanders
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Movie Reviews of Moll Flanders
Movie Review: HOLLYWOOD vs. MASTERPIECE THEATRE
Summary: 2 Stars
Don't waste your money on a bad replacement when you can see a MASTERPIECE.Movie Review: Gag Me With a Pitchfork, This Is Not True Moll Flanders!
Summary: 1 Stars
Without a doubt, this is one of THE WORST adaptations of one of my all-time favorite books. DeFoe creates a complex character of questionable morals with Moll Flanders-but this movie adaptation Americanizes and Puritanizes any true resonance of a believable and even intriguing persona. Morgan Freeman brings some glimmer of validity to this movie but his attempts fall short with such a ridiculously gutted plot of the original book. If you truly want to be surprised and delighted and shocked and horrified and held in suspense-read the book! It's amazing. The PBS version with ER's Elizabeth Cordaay(sp?) rings a little more true but honestly this version with Robin Wright is only a pale comparison to a truly rich text. If you haven't read the book, you might enjoy this pathetic cinematic attempt to glorify the santity of motherhood and it's utterly conventional plot-mother separated from child who spends the rest of the time making a good life for herself to get her child back(in the book Moll gives birth to not 1 but around 10 or 11 kids-all of whom she abandons when necessity prevails). Moll is no candidate for sainthood, but this is why the book was so truly wonderful-she's someone you find yourself rooting for despite her wicked, wicked ways...and oh how we relish in them...! Much like Milton's Paradise Lost, DeFoe fails to make us repent in light of what happens to Moll(&Lucifer). In my opinion, the way these two are riveted with flaws makes them all the more compelling and this is why I can denounce this movie adaptation with such conviction!Movie Review: Densham is a Dwit.
Summary: 1 Stars
This bomb wants to be all things to all people: except, apparently, intelligent. It's meant to be a kind of sexy romp with love and smallpox, featuring a woman who is poor but proud, a hooker with a heart of gold, with a very modern sense of self but a naked body: an Every-movie-woman! What in fact it is, is a plot devoid of wit in the service of viewer-friendliness. And as a result, this Moll, written and directed by Pen Densham (whose previous cinematic brush with classic literature was as writer-producer of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), is not just low-brow, it's no-brow.
Consider that the film opens in a convent/orphanage set in 18th Century England. See a problem with this? ENGLAND! A place and time where Catholicism was ILLEGAL, ergo, no convents, monastaries, priests, nuns, etc. And what exactly is a priest doing in a convent anyway? The plot only gets worse from there. We have the requisite noble black character, again totally out of time and place; an almost saintly love-interest; an evil madame who wavers between being just as bitchy or sympathetic as the plot requires at the moment; and a "surprise" ending that could only surprise the brain-dead.
Make no mistake, this was a real stinker at the box-office, and for good reason. Save your pennies and try the much superior BBC mini-series.
Movie Review: Gak! What IS this? Another ADAPTATION?
Summary: 1 Stars
My favorite critique of this film stated "...[the director] nicks the title of Daniel Defoe's bawdy novel, and shucks the rest..." Shucks is right; there is little or nothing in this movie that resembles the wonderful tale that Daniel Defoe told. This is a bizarre American film that wants to make a silly love story with Hoke from Driving Miss Daisy as its narrator (yes, I know and like Morgan Freeman...but what on earth is he doing in this movie?). This decision was undoubtedly made to draw audiences, dumb sheep that they are, expecting another Freeman masterpiece. Instead, they get this tripe, and go away thinking that they "know" about Moll Flanders, even though they've never read a single word of it. I'd love to see the faces of students, assigned Moll Flanders, who saw THIS drivel before taking their tests.
Sorry, you can go on and babble about your perceived "value" of this movie, but the fact remains: this is not Moll Flanders. (If I made a movie called the Bible and made up things, these same people would FLIP.) Be true to your literature...get the Masterpiece Theatre edition.
Movie Review: At this point, why not make it an original story?
Summary: 1 Stars
This film has rather little to do with the novel it is supposedly 'based' on.
At this point, why not make it an original story? Why pretend that this has anything to do with Moll Flanders? To tap into an existing market because of its name recognition factor? Shameful.
If you are going to do your own thing, then do not pretend it is something else.
And having decided to do "something else", then do something that is actually worthwhile! This is a disappointing film. A predictable plot which does not stir much of anything. Truly shameful in the end - especially when considering that the novel is quite a masterpiece.
And lets not even get started about the abysmal soundtrack...