Once Around
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Movie Reviews of Once Around
Movie Review: Once Around
Summary: 4 Stars
I would love to write a review for this movie, I watched it years ago and have been looking forward to watching it again. However, as it is Region 1, I CANNOT PLAY IT on my DVD player in the UK. Thanks, A. NicolaidouMovie Review: "Once Around"
Summary: 4 Stars
An older and very quirky love story. This one has pretty much gone unnoticed, but it's worth checking it out. If you like Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter, you will like this movie.Movie Review: Yuck! A comedy that morphs into a meoldrama
Summary: 3 Stars
Perhaps "Beaches" for the family melodrama generation, this movie starts out with great promise as a screwball comedy, with Richard Dreyfuss well cast as a hyperbolic and wealthy salesman who meets lifetime failure Holly Hunter. She switches nameplates so she can sit next to him at a motivational session dinner, they meet, become entranched with each other, and the romance is on. Then she takes him home to her Boston family which doesn't like the guy. All the ingredients are there for an outstanding comedy!
After this beginning, the movies treads downhill almost immediately, turning to a bluster of really inappropriate profanity, bad direction, overacting and outright idiocy. You should hear the Georgian Hunter pretend to sound like she's from Boston! It wasn't any better for New Jersey-born Laura San Giacomo, who played Hunter's sister. Andy why in heaven's name did the producers decide the family had to be Italian...in Boston, home of a large Irish population? And then act like they are Jewish?
A lot of the accents were nonsense but, poor enunciation aside, it was the ridiculously contrived plot twists that really sunk this turkey. It's fine that the family would be put off by new uppity rich boyfriend Dreyfuss. But is it OK that the movie should turn in a melodramatic direction? About 45 minutes through what started out as a promising comedy, this turns into "Ordinary People" with more tugging of emotions, guilt and cries of the Boston family being torn apart than Carter's used to have little pills!
I was frankly sickened by the direction this film went after such a strong beginning. Here are all these great character actors gathered together and not a single one distinguished themselves in this bomb. Gena Rowlands was extremely poorly directed, giving just about nothing of which she is capable aside from a scene where she wrestles a microphone away from the boyfriend at a wake. The ending was especially callous, conventional and sickening, I thought, even though it summed up the poor direction this film went after a strong start.
The one great element of this film I never realized before -- Danny Aiello is a fabulous singer with a wonderful tenor voice (assuming he did the singing himself; the credits included a long line of singers you didn't see on screen. The movie featured a pretty good soundtrack, too. Aiello was cast against type here as a strong father figure, opposite his typical portrayal as a lowlife, gangster or mob member. Like the rest of the cast, he did some unthinkable things in his role, then made up for them in silly and conventional ways in the penultimate scene.
I thought a movie had to feature a mostly Jewish cast to become as sophomorically melodramatic as "Once Around" becomes. I think this is only for people that want a good cry during the movies. There is nothing here for anyone that wants to be entertained via comedy or intelligence. Beware the promise that this is a comedy, for it's not.
Movie Review: once around....may be enough
Summary: 2 Stars
I started watching this film during a commercial of a baseball game. I got hooked on it in the 7th inning, unusual because we were winning, and was glad we won, because I couldn't turn off the film.
Though my favorite films with R. Dreyfuss are Close Encounters and The Goodbye Girl, I was a bit shocked at how old Dreyfuss looked in this film. But even though I missed the first part, and it took me a while to get the hang of it, I couldn't turn it off. Interesting, because I'm not sure if I liked it or not. My father's family are of Lithuanian descent, though because they were Jews, they were not considered real Lithuanians. No matter how long Jews lived in any country in eastern Europe, they were never accepted as part of the country they lived in. And in some Eastern European countries they were forced to live in ghettos even as late as the late 1800's, which is why so many Jews from that part of Europe came to America or Sweden in the late 1800s's as my family did. In any case, I saw no relationship between my Jewish grandparents and this Lithuanian man. We were far more like the Italians than the Lithuanians.
In fact, I couldn't understand this guy and his strange ways. I was sympathetic to the Italian family for not understanding him. It was a nice romance, I guess, but with one messy problem following another, I could have done without a sad ending too. So, I'm not sure if I liked the picture or not. The other thing was that Dreyfuss looked about 40 years older than Hunter, and Hunter's faster than lightening attraction to him seemed very odd. I just couldn't understand that attraction, not only because of the age difference, but because Dreyfuss acted so bizarre. Maybe it's because I missed the first part of the film. I'm thinking about ordering it just so I can figure that out. I recognized the sister as the wise cracking Kit De Luca from Pretty Woman. She does that kind of smart ass role much better than the depressing sister in this film. Well, that's horseracing.
Movie Review: Watch your step!
Summary: 2 Stars
I too was misled by these reviews, and I too am puzzled by the apparently sincere expressions of enthusiasm for this movie.
Maybe you have to be Italian or Lithuanian, but I watch a lot of real Italian movies (the ones with subtitles), and they are not like this.
I think that Dreyfus's character was inconsistent. He acted like a sleaze, and then he acted like a great guy, totally sincere, etc. Then he acted like a sleaze, flattering people, snowing them with gifts, etc. I simply think the screenwriter was trying for something he couldn't bring off.
Similarly with the movie as a whole. This is not simply a feel-good family, although obviously the screenwriter was trying to paint such a family. There needed to be more interaction than the stereotyped hugs and such. Something was missing.
Also, the story went nowhere. There was no plot, and very little story, and it lasted a long, long time. And the movie had nothing else to offer a viewer.
I would say, be very, very careful before buying this movie. I don't think it was overlooked. I think it was looked at and turned down.