CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

2001

Amidst the turmoil of WWII, Italian soldiers have come to occupy areas of Greece conquered by their allies at that point in the war, ze Germans. Nicolas Cage is the humble and musical Captain Corelli who has been assigned to stay with a Greek doctor, John Hurt, and his daughter, Penelope Cruz. Predictably, Cruz and Cage fall madly in love. While the story itself is pretty simple, the beauty in this film is in the Grecian scenery and the Italian music. It is certainly not in the acting. Cage has a bad Italian accent that comes and goes at random and whoever thought that Cruz's Spanish accent could be mistaken for Greek was wrong. Hurt and Christian Bale (who would've been a much better Corelli) do nice jobs in their roles and bring some respectability to the film. Cliched and melodramatic, at 2.5 hours you probably want to just wait for this one to come to VHS or DVD.

3 Stars

CDF

When I reviewed the book "Corelli's Mandolin" last year, I wrote, "The story and characters are buried under a ton of verbiage, similar to what students do when they hand in overwritten papers in order to impress their professors. This will probably be one of the rare cases where the movie will be better than the book." I WAS WRONG! The movie IS as bad as the book, saved only by the beautifully photographed Greek scenery and the enjoyable Italian music. Penelope Cruz once again proves that she simply can't act in English. Nicolas Cage was either directed to, or chose to, use an absurd faux Italian accent, which is distracting, when it's not downright hilarious. When will actors/directors realize that Italians, Greeks, Germans, don't speak with accents. They speak Italian, Greek, and German!!! Either the accents should be eliminated entirely, or else the film should be IN the foreign language with subtitles. Not even the always-excellent actors John Hurt and Christan Bale could save this fiasco. Questa fa puzza!

1 Star

NJB