jackeugenebarry
So yeah, this movie was slow and tedious, and like the world, as they say, it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. But I think that might've been the point. Bravo./Snore.I don't read much, but I do tend to like these literary costume jobs sometimes, because I find the way people carried themselves and treated each other back in the day to be pretty interesting, most of the time in a "what the hell were they thinking?" sorta way. Like "Thank God we've gotten past that sorta ridiculous B.S." I guess like the characters were masochists to be that way, and I guess I'm a bit of a cinematic masochist to watch them. Of course it can vary from flick to flick, but a lot of these things, both good and bad, seem to me to be about the "exquisite withholding." Scorsese's "Age of Innocence" is the best example I can think of right now.The things that most people posting here had problems with about this movie, I think is its whole reason for being. The movie revolves around these four people, whom i think were casted and acted PERFECTLY, exactly what they were supposed to be...Jeremy Northam's Italian dude is indeed a wet noodle. He thinks he's all suave and debonair, the lady-killer, the lover, and really he's just a cheesy boob with the spine and self-knowledge of an amoeba. He's dull, weak, and boring, but of course both of the story's women find him just FASCINATING! Why? Because of course oftentimes women are total IDIOTS about the men "in their lives", who they fill like empty vessels with their silly-ass romantic notions without ever actually stopping to take a good look at for who they really are. (If you're reading this and thinking I'm a chauvinistic unromantic pig, you may be right, but that does not mean I'm wrong.) So of course both women are head over heels for this clown. ("He's got AN ACCENT! ...and A BEARD! ... and he's A PRINCE! Oh my god, gimme some o' THAT!")Uma Thurman plays her character like Joan Crawford or Betty Davis, and it rings true. Why, she's an American "adventuress", dammit, and if she wants it all, well it's 'cuz she DESERVES it! Her character is such a conniving but bland and simple see-through bitch (played awesomely by Thurman) that I love how things go for her. She loses her cheesy lasagna lover and gets stuck with the stiff stuck-up asinine old idiot played by Nick Nolte. She gets WHAT SHE DESERVES.Kate Beckinsale is great as the porcelain doll daddy's girl who never had to lift a finger (or work a brain-cell) in her entire life. Of COURSE she's gonna go for the Italian Meatball, but be too pixie-brained, weak-willed and slathered in denial to see that he and her "friend" are laying pipe together in every old building in England. And of course she ends up with the "Prince", who, even though he's with her, will never get over what a slime-ball he is, or ever fully "be hers". She gets exactly WHAT SHE DESERVES. And bless his feeble-minded greasy heart, SO DOES HE.Lastly, Nolte's character, "the first American Billionaire" we're informed, is just an acquisitions man from the get-go, piling up statues and paintings and antiquities (and a daughter and then a wife) just so he can put them in a museum (tomb) in "American City" and say "Hey, Look what I got! Come and look at all this Sh*t that you could never afford!" He tells himself and others that he's doing it to "give back" something to the people, but he doesn't believe it himself for a minute, and neither does anybody else. And in the end, he takes his cold statue of a stupid venal wife, and his big empty pile of sh*t and goes back to install himself in his museum (tomb) along with them. He gets, in the end, exactly WHAT HE DESERVES.As do we, the blessed/cursed audience. Awesome movie, Dude. Roll Credits.p.s.I Do Wish that some ballsy filmmakers would, just once, owning the rights to some old literary masterpiece like this, would do a straight-up lavish adaptation like this one, and then change the ending so that, say, Nick Nolte's character, fed-up and despondent and enraged, takes an old battle-ax off one the grand walls and chops the other three main characters to pieces, then collapses mumbling onto the gore-filled carpet, camera slow-pushes in on his blood- spattered face. Roll Credits. Now That would be Something.
Neil Doyle
It took an enormous amount of patience to sit through all of THE GOLDEN BOWL without ever feeling any connection with the dull characters. UMA THURMAN looks out of place in a costume film and is too much of a modernist to do well in a Henry James tale. JEREMY NORTHAM has a distracting accent that never sounds like it belongs to an Italian prince. KATE BECKINSALE as the girl who is too devoted to her father is so bland she almost disappears, even when she has her more confrontational moments. And it's odd to see NICK NOLTE in such a passive role, quite a departure for him. As for poor JAMES FOX, he's given little more than a bit role. Only ANGELICA HUSTON seems to have a grasp of a role which she is able to give some color to.The story of relationships is slow moving, painfully slow and not the easiest to follow as we witness that the golden bowl is indeed cracked, in more ways than one and "has a flaw". So does the film--in fact, it has several and by the time the story has run its course we feel cheated by the ending which simply finishes with a thud before the end credits start.Sorry, the scenery and the costumes are lavish, opulent and breathtakingly gorgeous in true Merchant Ivory tradition, but the Henry James story remains a surface thing that never grips the emotion or permits the characters to do more than move about and recite their lines with precision but little emotional depth.Not recommended unless watching splendid sets and scenery is enough.
Rosie
This film was pretty bad. Uma Thurman was painfully bad in a hysterical over-the-top performance, Jeremy Northam - who I usually love - had this really weird Italian accent going on and Kate Beckinsale and Nick Nolte, while giving decent performances, were just boring. It's a combination of boring characters and characters which are just awful – and not in the fun Dangerous Liaisons kind of way – that make this film kind of painful in a "I can't believe I stayed up until 2:00am watching this crap" way. I only gave it a 3 because some of the scenery is very pretty to look at. If you are a huge Henry James fan, then you might want to give it a try, otherwise, run! Run far away!!
