| An Everlasting Piece |
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| 1/2 |
| Rating: Mediocre Distributor: Dreamworks MPAA Rating: R Release Date: December 25th, 2000 Running Length: 1 hour, 43 minutes Genre: Comedy, Drama Director: Barry Levinson Cast: Barry McEvoy, Brian F. O'Byrne, Billy Connolly, amd Anna Friel. |
| picture above from www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/video/ misc/dreamworks/everlasting/el-home.html/ |
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| Plot: Two hair barbers (Barry McEvoy, Brian F. O'Byrne) at an asylum in Northern Ireland discover that one of their patients was recently the head of a hairpiece company before becoming insane. The two decide to take over the company. One of the barbers is Catholic, and the other is Protestant. They feel this will allow them a sales advantage due to the lack of chemistry between the two religions in Northern Ireland. They feel they can now safely sell to members of both religions. They find out however that another company, Toupee or Not Toupee is making a move on the market too. Thus, they must be competitive and speedy in their sales. They adopt a strategy of shaving part of their hair, and wearing toupees to appeal to their customers who are unsure of the product. They find politics mix badly with the toupee market as they face deep dilemnas towards the climax of the film. |
| Critique: An Everlasting Piece is a failure of genre mixing at the highest level. Its comedy, and drama are both are miserable, and fall far away from the bull's eye. The comedy elements take themselves too seriously to be funny, and the drama elements are much too silly to be affecting, or moving. They are infused in one of the ugliest attempts at comedy, and drama I've yet seen. The only good quality of the film is the solid direction by Academy Award winning director Barry Levinson. He captures a few beautiful landscape shots, and expertly engineers the film in transitions and important shots. I'm sure the cinematographer aided him in those fields also. The film's writing suffers dramatically. It is much too bitter, hateful and confused. The dialogue is dreary, dull, and weird. The execution of conflicts is pitifully poor, and generally random. The climax is especially uninvolving. The film casts a deeply confused, and never comprehensible mood. It is a strange experiment with a somewhat stimulating premise gone extraordinarily awry. The film also never really attempts enough humor to fill its early promise. It drowns itself in silly, unbelievable melodrama. An Everlasting Piece doesn't give any clues for the audience to know how to react. There are a lot of mixed messages, and ruined themes. It fails on every attempt at entertaining the audience. It's an awfully dull, poorly conceived film. review by supernothingman |