Puccini for Beginners
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Movie Reviews of Puccini for Beginners
Movie Review: Mildly entertaining
Summary: 3 Stars
I was really looking forward to the release of this film on dvd. I expected great things from it's maker. I was pretty disappointed when I finally got to see it. The film focuses mainly on the 'straight' relationship and none of the characters really have any chemistry. The story was kind of cute and watchable enough but it only really just touched the surface of things. It pretty much played it safe. I guess that's what you have to do if you wanna break in to the mainstream with these kind of subject matters.Movie Review: Lovely New York landscape
Summary: 3 Stars
On a lovely New York landscape, a tale of a love triangle and friends surrounding emphasizes on a not-so-casually disclosed topic of female bi-sexuality and transvestites as male's one has been present on screen regularly (for instance, Galazio Forema -"True Blue", 20 Centimeters).
Movie Review: Woody Allen for Beginners
Summary: 2 Stars
**1/2
Written and directed by Maria Maggenti, "Puccini For Beginners" is a tres chic romantic comedy set in a movie-spawned Manhattan where virtually everyone we meet is Caucasian, trendily upscale and sexually conflicted.
The strained setup lands somewhere between a labored screwball sex farce and a recycled Woody Allen angst-fest: Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser) is an opera-loving, afraid-of-commitment lesbian who finds herself inadvertently and simultaneously dating both a man (Justin Kirk) and his longtime girlfriend (winningly played by Gretchen Mol). As Allegra bounces back and forth between her two oblivious paramours, the characters talk out the issues of their relationships as if they were channeling left-over bits from "Annie Hall" or "Manhattan."
"Puccini for Beginners" is one of those small-scale independent features that thinks it's being smarter and more insightful about romantic relationships than it really is. Actually, after all those really sharp Woody Allen exposes on the same subject, very little in this film feels like fresh observation. To be truthful, with the exception of Mol's winsome Grace, most of the characters here are more annoying than they are appealing. Not only are the plotting and much of the writing too cutesy by half, but so is Maggenti's directorial style, which relies heavily on smart-alecky narration, freeze-framing, and dopey fantasy sequences to generate laughs.
"Puccini for Beginners" offers a few genuinely funny moments within its blessedly short 81-minute running time, but throughout we're plagued by the nagging and irreverent suspicion that the film might have been more accurately entitled "Puccini for Idiots."
Movie Review: Mediocre attempt of a "brilliant romantic comedy"
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a mediocre (not terrible, just mediocre) attempt of a romantic comedy. The story centers around an undecided young woman who can't decide whether she is really a lesbian, whether she loved the last girlfriend who dumped her for her inability to commit, whether she is now in love with a man or maybe with his... ex-girlfriend. As you can imagine, the situation will get complicated very quickly, giving rise to fairly trite situations.
Acting is mostly mediocre, and would be just fine for a TV sitcom. Tina Benko and Justin Kirk save the day a bit, but the main character, played by Elizabeth Reaser, is very forgettable, rather silly, and not even very attractive. The dialogue tries hard to be witty, but it ends up in most cases being just trivial and quite unnatural. As other reviewers have pointed out, the screenplay really sounds a like "Woody Allen for beginners".
Overall, a very forgettable movie, which I will quickly forget.
Movie Review: just ok
Summary: 2 Stars
this film felt like a bunch of 3rd and 4th tier actress's and actor's came on board and did a film where there was suppose to be a complex love triangle,but there was suppose to be humor,but it was too dry for it's own good and never got going. this film just seemed like a bunch of other films and nothing seemed to work or click. this film doesn't go anywhere and becomes pretty cliched really fast.