Archives: A
- E F - N O
- Z Posters Message
Boards
Who
We Are and Why We Do What We Do
BLU-RAY DVDs:
Batman Begins
Black Hawk Down
Blade Runner
Casino Royale
Dark Knight
District Nine
Defiance
Fast and Furious
Fast and Furious movies set
Fifth Element
The Hangover
Incredible HULK
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man
Kill Bill 1 & 2
James Bond Ultimate ed v1James Bond Ultimate ed v2James Bond Ultimate ed v3
Julie & Julia
Moon
Public Enemies
Rambo box set
Silence of the Lambs
Sin City
This is Spinal Tap
Terminator
Terminator Salvation
Terminator 2
Top Gun
Total Recall
300
Transformers: Revenge of Fallen
Ultimate Matrix coll
Twilight
Underworld
Watchmen (dir cut)
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine
BLU-Ray for family DVDs
Bolt
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter & Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Order of Phoenix
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
Ice Age/Alvin + Chipmunks set
The Incredibles
Jungle Book
Juno
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters Inc
Nightmare Before Xmas
101 Dalmatians
Pinocchio
Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Sleeping Beauty
Spiderwick Chronicles
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Transformers SE
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
We're Kidlet Safe
Search engine
by FreeFind
click to search site
Now in Release:
2012
A Perfect Getaway
The Blind Side
A Christmas Carol
An Education
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Invictus
Is Anybody There?
It's Complicated
Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
The Lovely Bones
My Sister's Keeper
New in Town
Nine
Pirate Radio
Precious
The Proposal
Red Cliff
The Road
Shrink
St. Trinian's
The Strip
Surrogates
Taken
The Uninvited
Up in the Air
Young Victoria
DVDs on Sale:
Aliens Quadrilogy (set)
An American in Paris
Batman
Begins
Blade
Runner
Coraline
The Dark Knight
Day the Earth Stood Still
Defiance
Die Hard collection 1-4
District Nine
Last Days of Fillmore West
Fast & Furious movies set
Forrest
Gump
Gone
With the Wind
The Hangover
Alfred Hitchcock set
Indiana
Jones trilogy
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man SE
Lord
of Rings 12 discs
Marx Bros set
Ultimate
Matrix set
Milk
Monty
Python - Holy Grail
Moon
Public Enemies
Sin City
South
Park Movie
Star
Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Terminator Salvation
Up
Wall-E
Watchmen - Ultimate cut
Woodstock
X-Men
Trilogy
X-Men Origins Wolverine
DisneyPixar & family DVDs Looney
Toons
Alice
in Wonderland
Bambi
Beauty
and the Beast
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bolt
Cinderella
Coraline
E.T.
Harry
Potter yrs 1-4 set
Harry Potter
& Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
& Order of Phoenix
Kung Fu Panda
The
Lion King
Mary
Poppins 45th LE
Pinocchio
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Shrek Trilogy
Simpsons Movie
Spider-Man Trilogy
Star Trek movies set
Star
Trek TOS (TV)
ST:TNG complete tv set
Star Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star
Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE
Golden Age DVD
Volume
1
Volume
2
Volume
3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD
Season
1
Season
2
Season
3
Popeye the Sailor DVD
v.1 1933 - 1938
v.2 1938 - 1940
v.3 1941 - 1943
75th anniversary coll.ed.
|
PalmettoStarring Woody Harrelson, Elisabeth Shue, Gina GershonScreenplay by E. Max Frye based on the novel "Just Another Sucker" by James Hadley Chase Directed by Volker Schlondorff Website: www.castle-rock.com |
IN SHORT: yech.
Cranky's heard it said that things move more slowly down South -- being a manic New Yorker, everything moves more slowly outside of NYC -- but there's never been nothing like Palmetto, Florida. Many movies have struggled mightily to attain the heights of confusion and mediocrity that the film bearing the title of this town (not to be confused with the very real life Palmetto, FL) does.
It is tired. It is tiring and tiresome. It is a terrible turd of a movie and should be avoided with the same deliberateness that you use avoiding dog droppings. It is flat out wretched.
It does feature the lovely Elisabeth Shue in a variety of very tight dresses; a sure sign that spring is in the air. What tries to be a sexy, mysterious, noir-ish story of a man lured into a sure-fire kidnapping screen takes so much time to get off the ground that you won't care by the time it does. Then the story shifts gears and everything you've seen turns out to be a lie.
But you still won't care.
The sitch: 2 years back newspaperman Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson) stumbled across a major political payola deal in the tiny town of Palmetto. When he blew the whistle, he wound up in jail framed for the crime. Go figure. Set free after the frame was uncovered, Harry moves back in with his girlfriend (Gina Gershon) who, apparently, has remained chaste pending his return. Failing to find work, a hot blonde (Shue) offers Harry 50 grand to help with the faked kidnapping of her stepdaughter and jumps his bones in the process. When the deal goes down, Harry is hired by the local police to handle the inevitable deluge of press. Irony can only go so far before people start turning up dead.
This being Florida, Harrelson sweats. Buckets of the stuff. Neither Shue nor Gershon do. The "erotic" scenes (pick your couple) aren't. The requisite plot twist will have you spending more thinking time trying to figure out how the first half of the flick could make sense given what you discover in the second half. Cranky still hasn't quite figured it out and his brain is hurting pretty bad.
Palmetto is not sexy. It is not thrilling. It is not a compelling, filled with twists and turns mystery about to unfold. It is about two hours longer than it should be, and it only runs about two hours. Audience reaction was so incredibly negative, with most comments running along the lines of "what was I thinking when I thought I'd like this?" Feh.
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Palmetto, he would have paid . . .
$1.00
Palmetto is a waste of time, though it's not wretched enough to rate the coveted zero. It's just plain boring.