...and most atrocious? The DVD package's false advertising: "After 60 years, Welles' (sic)...vision has finally been realized." In a pig's eye. "Using the original shooting script, director Alfonso Arau...has re-filmed every scene according to Welles' (sic) directions." (The possessive of "Welles" is "Welles's," not "Welles'". Cheez.) And yet somehow without reference to either that script or those directions. Scenes are shuffled irrationally, others are missing, banal dialogue is added, there is an omnipresent, banal, and thoroughly unhelpful musical score, and the consistently perverse, absurd casting is compounded by equally consistent pathetically obvious bad acting. It is hard to say who is worst, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers is certainly the most insufferable, with his perfect and perfectly awful American accent, his ugly pouty face, and his complete lack of nuance. Jennifer Tilly -- an actress who, like Meyers, has done excellent work with Woody Allen -- is so lacking in any of the depth that Agnes Moorehead brought to the same role that -- well, it is criminal. Almost everyone in this has done better work -- but in contemporary material. (I needn't name names, EVERYONE is terrible... though the actor playing the 19-year-old Fred Kinney is handsome and has no chance to do any bad acting. He gets my vote. Also uncredited in the IMDb cast list!...Oh, alright: I will admit that Bruce Greenwood, Gretchen Mol, Dina Merrill and David Gilliam at least do play as though that had seen Welles's masterpiece and have some respect for it. But what can you do with direction like this???) No one seems to have even the vaguest notion that looks, behavior ... LIFE, was any different a hundred years and more ago from what it is today. Which difference, unfortunately, happens to be the very subject matter of Booth Tarkington's thoughtful, beautiful novel on which this horror is based. Both script adaptation and direction have proceeded with no sense whatever of what is most touching about the source material and the Welles film: their discretion. Compare the famous scene in which George learns that Fanny is penniless. The Welles version (and the superb acting by Agnes Moorehead and Tim Holt) is about the inability to tell the worst until there is no getting round it. The TV version is all about throwing plates and screaming. I will leave it to you to decide which is more effective. The suggestion of incestuous desire between Isabel and George is as loathsome as it is ridiculous. George's screams after the car accident: compare the absolute silence of George in the Welles film.
By all means read the book, watch the Welles picture (a very model of adaptation from novel to screen), then watch this only if you want to experience genuine aesthetic pain.
Why my comment is not ordered "worst" is beyond me. I could not be more disdainful of this hideous travesty.
By all means read the book, watch the Welles picture (a very model of adaptation from novel to screen), then watch this only if you want to experience genuine aesthetic pain.
Why my comment is not ordered "worst" is beyond me. I could not be more disdainful of this hideous travesty.