Curtain Call
A bachelor afraid of marriage angers his long-time girlfriend by buying a splendid townhouse just for himself, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of a famous theatrical couple, who teach him about love and commitment.
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- Cast:
- James Spader , Polly Walker , Michael Caine , Maggie Smith , Buck Henry , Sam Shepard , Frank Whaley
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Reviews
The greatest movie ever!
Fantastic!
Expected more
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
I caught this on TV the other night and am so sorry I wasted my time. This was a boring, completely predictable, stupid movie. I thought it was going to be good and was looking forward to watching it considering all the great talent, but the story was awful and jokes were so lame. The writing wasn't clever at all. I'm sure that Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, and James Spader have this turkey on the "Ones I'd Like to Forget" list. These are all terrific actors and usually make great movies. How did all these good actors get roped into this fiasco? I guess it must have looked good on paper. My advice is to avoid this movie at all costs, unless you are looking for something that will put you to sleep.
Stevenson is a young publishing executive. He buys a house with his girlfriend despite he non-committal nature of their relationship. His problems are made worst by the discovery of two bickering ghost sharing his house. However when his girlfriend leaves him, they help him win her back and teach him about lasting love.This wants to be a romantic comedy about eternal love. However it fails in two areas romance and comedy. The story is very simple man loses girl, man meets ghosts, ghosts help win back girl. However it feels so heavy you'd think you're watching War & Peace. This effect isn't helped by the total lack of laughs in this `comedy'. Few if any of the lines are funny (mainly because they totally lack any sort of charm or wit) but what makes it worse is that the actors are playing to the laughs! There are plenty of scenes where gaps seem to have been left in dialogue or in routines to allow the audience to finish rolling in the aisles. These may only be a split second long, but in the absence of laughter they feel longer.I watched this with another Caine comedy `Without a Clue'. That was average as well but his performance really lifted it. Here he can't do the same his character is charmless and occasionally resorts to mugging to get by (witness his dancing after returning from Rio). Similarly Maggie Smith has nothing to do and feels too snobbish to be likeable. The relationship between the two is also dry and it's unfortunate that their `eternal' relationship is supposed to be the model for true love. Spader, who can do good given the chance, seems totally out of his depth with his two classy co-stars. He resorts to doing some sort of sub-par Hugh Grant impersonation full of stuttering and blinking when under pressure, except he can't make it seem charming in the same way that Grant can (when he's on form) and his character quickly becomes shallow and uninteresting.The film collapses to a happy ending at a new years party but by then any interest I had in the characters had evaporated. The film is only about 90 minutes long but it felt like 3 hours, every scene felt dull and dragged out.Overall, even with Caine, Smith and Sam Shepherd filling out an impressive cast list this totally fails to impress. It's not that it's the worst film ever made but it's an average story, with average characters, average performances and comedy that totally misses the mark. The end result? A dull, unfunny film that is impossible to care about or enjoy.
Curtain Call was very well casted. The chemistry of the actors and actresses flowed from the screen into your heart, by reminding you of the time you tried to give an explanation of the unexplainable, such as 'I swear what I saw was a U.F.O.,' and trying to explain, but not being able to find the right words in order to explain. This film was witty, as well as embracingly charming. Curtain Call had that unrealistic nature, yet it was imaginative. That's what gives this movie it's charm!
Spader silly and annoying; plot hackneyed; Walker and the house gorgeous, especially the old wood. Boring overall. Not as comedic as it intends Don't bother to see it