I never imagined I'd see Vanessa Redgrave give a bad performance, but then I never would have imagined she'd end her career in stupid movies like How About You. What a waste of some great actors.
The story is achingly maudlin and predictable, and the dialog is corny and phony - like a sappy Lifetime TV movie larded with profanity, in which consuming cannabis is the magical solution to every problem. It's stupid.
And the song! I never hated "How About You?" until I had it force-fed to me by this movie. Sung in its entirety first by Bobby Darin over the opening credits, THEN by Redgrave in a pub; a brief ragtime version by the young sisters on a piano; and again by Redgrave and an unseen chorus at the finale. That's more than enough for a lifetime.
The director is a moron. He not only has the talent and esthetic sensibility of a soap opera hack (every stupid point he is determined to get across has to be repeated ad nauseam, to make absolutely sure that NOBODY will NOT get it), but has some kind of fetish for things drifting down out of the sky.
He has snow falling while everything is green (including the ground, where the snow evidently melts on contact, although it sits forever on actors' hair) and dead leaves drifting thickly down at Christmas-time although there's absolutely no wind to pluck them off the trees. That does not happen except in this idiot director's imagination. Trite and heavyhanded metaphors for death, maybe? Who knows. Or cares.
This dumb, irritating movie is only for folks who are either fascinated or terrified by death. People get old, they fall apart, and then they die. So what? It happens to everybody. It's happening to me now. It's perfectly natural and good, except to people in strong denial, who believe if they do everything the doctors tell them to do THEY won't die; which, of course, is a lie.
So I advise skipping this stupid movie, unless you have a death fetish that won't allow you such freedom. The only good thing about it is getting to LOOK at Redgrave, who gets more beautiful with each passing year. What a marvel she is! If only she hadn't had to say such relentlessly stupid lines she single-handedly would have made this movie worth watching.
The story is achingly maudlin and predictable, and the dialog is corny and phony - like a sappy Lifetime TV movie larded with profanity, in which consuming cannabis is the magical solution to every problem. It's stupid.
And the song! I never hated "How About You?" until I had it force-fed to me by this movie. Sung in its entirety first by Bobby Darin over the opening credits, THEN by Redgrave in a pub; a brief ragtime version by the young sisters on a piano; and again by Redgrave and an unseen chorus at the finale. That's more than enough for a lifetime.
The director is a moron. He not only has the talent and esthetic sensibility of a soap opera hack (every stupid point he is determined to get across has to be repeated ad nauseam, to make absolutely sure that NOBODY will NOT get it), but has some kind of fetish for things drifting down out of the sky.
He has snow falling while everything is green (including the ground, where the snow evidently melts on contact, although it sits forever on actors' hair) and dead leaves drifting thickly down at Christmas-time although there's absolutely no wind to pluck them off the trees. That does not happen except in this idiot director's imagination. Trite and heavyhanded metaphors for death, maybe? Who knows. Or cares.
This dumb, irritating movie is only for folks who are either fascinated or terrified by death. People get old, they fall apart, and then they die. So what? It happens to everybody. It's happening to me now. It's perfectly natural and good, except to people in strong denial, who believe if they do everything the doctors tell them to do THEY won't die; which, of course, is a lie.
So I advise skipping this stupid movie, unless you have a death fetish that won't allow you such freedom. The only good thing about it is getting to LOOK at Redgrave, who gets more beautiful with each passing year. What a marvel she is! If only she hadn't had to say such relentlessly stupid lines she single-handedly would have made this movie worth watching.