Okay movie, but a little frustrating to watch.
Main 2 problems:
1) Romantic waffling between James Garner & Julie Andrews
2) Too many messages
The majority of issues stemmed from the script. I would have bet a paycheck this movie was based on a book, its not! The script has way too much dialogue and you never seemed to know what direction the movie and the characters are going to go in next.
The romantic leads in a movie can fall in love and break up, but not 6 times! There were 3 separate cycles of disliking each other and then liking each other with lots of convoluted dialogue in between. Andrews and Garner are appealing characters you root for, but after all the waffling, you start to lose interest.
It feels like a message movie. It comes off as a kind of a cool antiwar movie at first, but then some characters start to turn patriotic and Garner looks like the bad guy and the movie gets a little dark. My best guess is that the movie was trying to show all facets of war and how everyone has different motivations, but the script was a little too much dialogue about the psychology of war and the movie loses its way and its charm. (Maybe more for Tarantino fans?)
And really the only reason the movie is shot in black & white is so it can include 5 or 6 war newsreel shots at the end which is unfortunate. I think the picnic scene between Andrews and Garner in color could have really boosted the movie, especially if they had smoothed out the romantic arcs better.
The title is a bold choice. Had the movie worked better, it would have been fine. As it is, I'm not sure how Emily was really "Americanized".
Main 2 problems:
1) Romantic waffling between James Garner & Julie Andrews
2) Too many messages
The majority of issues stemmed from the script. I would have bet a paycheck this movie was based on a book, its not! The script has way too much dialogue and you never seemed to know what direction the movie and the characters are going to go in next.
The romantic leads in a movie can fall in love and break up, but not 6 times! There were 3 separate cycles of disliking each other and then liking each other with lots of convoluted dialogue in between. Andrews and Garner are appealing characters you root for, but after all the waffling, you start to lose interest.
It feels like a message movie. It comes off as a kind of a cool antiwar movie at first, but then some characters start to turn patriotic and Garner looks like the bad guy and the movie gets a little dark. My best guess is that the movie was trying to show all facets of war and how everyone has different motivations, but the script was a little too much dialogue about the psychology of war and the movie loses its way and its charm. (Maybe more for Tarantino fans?)
And really the only reason the movie is shot in black & white is so it can include 5 or 6 war newsreel shots at the end which is unfortunate. I think the picnic scene between Andrews and Garner in color could have really boosted the movie, especially if they had smoothed out the romantic arcs better.
The title is a bold choice. Had the movie worked better, it would have been fine. As it is, I'm not sure how Emily was really "Americanized".