So much average

Fantastic!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Eighteen years later and it's still being shown? What an embarrassment for all. Did anyone read the script before agreeing to do this? This movie is jaw-droppingly bad and cringe-inducing. The story is insipid and that's being generous. The terrors of the Holocaust in this film could have been substituted for a disappointing shopping trip to Barney's. The characters are all extremely attractive but shallow and undeveloped, the settings and art direction are as beautiful and unrealistic as a Ralph Lauren magazine spread. That's the problem with the entire movie--everything is pretty, clean and sterile. The acting is direction-less, a waste of a fine cast. The only reason I could think of why this 90 minutes of wasted time came to light is the back story of a casting director calling in favors from agents and the studio because what he really wanted to do was direct.

I didn't expect a lot from this film, but I thought it would be worth a try. There were about two points during the first 35 minutes in which I was going to turn it off. It wasn't that interesting, and it was slow-moving. But, I have liked some things Clare Danes has been in, especially Temple Grandin, so I stuck with it. About the time that Daisy starts to see some fruit in her teenage crush, it really picked up and I was glad I had kept watching. Soon after that, though, it continued to be disappointing. Jude Law's character is not consistent; sometimes he's nice, and sometimes his character is just dull. I don't think that was really in the acting of Jude, but more in the writing. This was the absolute worst acting I've ever seen Claire Danes. I bet she's embarrassed about this film now. She went from being, at times, a mature young lady to other times seeming like a nine-year-old, emotionally. Her acting reminded me of an 11-year-old in a school play thinking that she was acting, so she had to be dramatic. Claire has wild swings of being skittishly excited and kind of queer (in the "immature" sense of that term). Her voice fluctuations were hard to take. Oh, and then there's the plot. Lots of dream sequences that don't really fully connect and an attempt in the writing to connect two separate themes and three separate locations that just came off disjointed. There were scenes that just seemed to be bad editing, that didn't follow. Don't waste your time; see another Claire Danes film.

The acting was atrocious, although with Claire Danes, I have yet to see a movie I liked. Jude Law made an interesting debut, but I didn't quite understand what he was supposed to be. Danes' character was just strange, I couldn't understand the collapse in the lecture. How many times can we beat the Jews or any other race for that matter? The move mad the mistake of making the general population seem very prejudiced. I found this movie unrealistic and boring. Too many of these "discover you're heritage" movies are coming out. At least mine, "Angela's Ashes" was decent, but if you've seen them once, you've seen them all. For those of you looking to reconnect with your past, might I suggest "The Pianist"? This movie is horrible, don't waste your time.

I was subjected to this movie a couple of nights ago and I have to say - it is the worst film I've seen in a long time. The whole story is sickly sweet. Clare Danes looks (and acts) like she is about 12. The writing is terrible - it has some of the cheesiest lines ever. It is worth watching for the tacky zoom shot in the very last scene. Don't waste your time.