Zelig
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.62 You Save: $8.36 (56%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.61 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Zelig
Movie Review: What's in a name?
Summary: 2 Stars
Trying to figure out a header for this review epitomizes the problems that I have with this very middling Woody Allen film. Readers of this space know that I have done many reviews of Allen's films, as actor, director or both but this one annoys me no end. In short, not all Woody Allen movies are created equal. The premise behind this one is potentially interesting, perhaps more so today than when the film was originally produced- a send up of our celebrity-crazed society.
With Allen playing the role of a human chameleon in the Jazz Age there certainly were possibilities for a funny look at how the geeks look at a fellow geek but it falls flat. Why? I believe that here Allen just went back and found every sight gag and cliché that he had already used in many previous films- the bow (or finger) to Freud, Marx, the New York intelligentsia (here Irving Howe and Susan Sontag), Jewish childhoods, fascination with gentile women (here Mia Farrow, as an chain smoking experimental psychiatrist) and so forth.
If this list sounds familiar to Allen fans then you have the sense of my feelings on this film. Woody flat ran out of steam on this one. Fortunately there is plenty of other work by Allen to pick from. Do so.
Movie Review: Has to be his worst film!
Summary: 1 Stars
I own about 20 Woody Allen movies on DVD and this one was never purchased by me, nor will it ever be. I love his movies (why else would I buy about 20 of them on DVD), but his experiment on this one fell well short - it bombed, and that's why you never hear about it, plain and simple. One reviwer compared it's style to the boring historical documents you are forced to watch in school, but he went on to say it was anything but boring. I disagree; it's nothing but boring, extremely boring and, for lack of a better word, stupid. Buy *any* other Woody Allen movie on DVD and you will own a better movie than this one.