Smug, cliched, vapid, and fit only for the self-esteem generation

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I cannot understand all these trolls with such HOSTILITY toward an old movie. It's not a GREAT movie, it wasn't Academy Award winning quality, but hell it was pretty good, it has a message, and dammit, I use up an entire box of tissues every time I watch it. What is happening here? It's making some big tough guys cry and they're getting pissed off that it hit a sensitive nerve in them or something?! I'm baffled. And the thing is, no one has an actually VALID argument against the movie! They're angry, they're raving, and they have no good reason to be complaining.

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I can't understand your crazy moon language.

I didn't like this movie at all. I thought it was pretentious, unrealistic, unengaging and frankly a waste of talent. Hopkins should have passed on this one. The basic idea was good, the cast did a descent job and I even liked the morale (even though it was layed on a bit too thick). But the script was horrible and the movie was trying WAY too hard to be the oscar-movie it certainly is not! It seems to have all the parts of an oscar-movie (a man crying, a corrupt prison system, the misunderstood character etc) yet missing the substance to back it up.. much like trying to swim in shallow waters. All they really had to do was float and make this movie good instead of failing terribly at trying to make it great.

That being said.. I think you're being quite arrogant and ignorant in your ideas about youth and those who like this movie. In doing so you don't really strike me as an adult with your prejudgments and hasty generalizations. But you may also be an angry old man completely out of touch with reality.. forming his own black and white conclusions about the world he does no longer understand.

If you were wise.. I think you would know that generalizing people on the basis of taste in movies is impossible. Movies are complex multi-layered compositions that can appeal to many different people in many different ways based on their unique personality. I frequently come across people on these boards that have the "people who didn't like this movie are idiots" attitude (or vis versa).. and mostly I (by mistake apparently) assume they must be trolls or teenagers not thinking twice. You've proven me wrong.. thank you!

I, quite frankly, tire of the 'we will get wisdom by going back to nature and living like wild animals' schlock. Maybe children think and feel that way or stoned mother-earth types, but sober adults, and educated ones at that? Pretty sorry.

And, the Hopkins character really did seem to care more about his gorilla family than his human family. That alone makes him seem rather cold-hearted and unlikeable to me. Were the gorillas more worthy of his love than people?? If so, why? We really don’t get an answer to that – the closest we get are references to FREEDOM and that they don’t live in ILLUSION (they actually haven’t evolved enough to even go there), and the entire theme about CONTROL was murky at best.

Why DID the Hopkins character decide to live among the gorillas? Because they ‘accepted’ him? That’s pretty lame. If he so badly needed acceptance, it doesn’t speak well of him (in addition to his cold-heartedness toward his family!)

I also think the attempted parallels between the Hopkins character's life in the jungle and what transpired with the corrupt prison system were confused and not quite apt. It's like the movie was trying to say something about 'that' (whatever 'that' was) but could only muster a whisper.

Yes; I think we can all agree that being in prison is NOT a nice thing and that being in prison means that you are deprived of your freedom and that beating on people is a bad, evil thing to do and that baby gorillas are really cute :)

I also did not find CG's epiphanies or whatever rapid character transformation he was supposed to be going through very realistic or even necessary to the story – at least, not in the way they were presented.

Everything else regarding parallels between the 'two worlds' was too mushed up and somewhat pretentious, IMHO.

The film was worth a watch, if only to see Hopkins try to pull it off. And, I managed to sit through it. But, I probably will not watch it again.




"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois