We hired this movie from Blockbuster last night (yes, we still have an open Blockbuster near us!) and it was my daughters choice. To be fair to her, the stars of the movie are Colin Firth, Alan Rickman and Cameron Diaz, so she, like us, was probably expecting a much better film.
IMDB describes the film as 'An art curator decides to seek revenge on his abusive boss by conning him into buying a fake Monet, but his plan requires the help of an eccentric and unpredictable Texas rodeo queen,' and this may be part of the reason why the film lets the viewer down. Not only is Diaz (The Mask, There's Something About Mary) a caricature of a Texas rodeo queen, but her accent to me, admittedly British, sounds dreadful. Firth and Rickman do their best with stilted characters, but they and the hotel staff perform badly stereotypical upper-class accents, not to mention the small role of Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games, The Devil Wears Prada) as Martin Zaidenweber who had an appalling accent which I think was meant to be German.
Firth (The King's Speech, Bridget Jones' Diary) plays Harry Deane, the art curator seeking revenge on his boss Shabandar played by Rickman (Harry Potter saga, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves) and Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar, Dr Zhivago) the Major who paints the fake Monet.
The farce elements in the Savoy play quite well and we did find ourselves laughing out loud in this section, but the rest of the film failed to raise the laughs expected of a Coen brothers film.
Gambit is a remake of the 1966 film of the same name and may explain why Firth seems to be channelling Michael Caine in both acting and looks throughout the film.
With taglines: 'The con is on,' 'A fake painting. The ultimate heist,' and 'A fake masterpiece. The ultimate plan,' it is no wonder Shabandar is not the only one fooled. 5/10
#Gambit
No comments:
Post a Comment