BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

hokeybutt CURTAIN CALL (2 outta 5 stars)Harmless, barely amusing tale of some blank-souled Yuppies who move into a house which turns out to be haunted by the spirits of a bickering husband and wife acting team (Michael Caine, Maggie Smith). James Spader plays the only person who can see them... as they continue to dispense advice... and turn his life upside down as he tries to avoid serious commitment to his long-time fiancée. Not really very funny, not really very romantic, not really very anything... just a way to kill some time. Not one of the more memorable comedies about ghosts annoying the living. Maybe with a better script the cast could have salvaged something out of it.

bob the moo Stevenson is a young publishing executive. He buys a house with his girlfriend despite he non-committal nature of their relationship. His problems are made worst by the discovery of two bickering ghost sharing his house. However when his girlfriend leaves him, they help him win her back and teach him about lasting love.This wants to be a romantic comedy about eternal love. However it fails in two areas – romance and comedy. The story is very simple – man loses girl, man meets ghosts, ghosts help win back girl. However it feels so heavy you'd think you're watching War & Peace. This effect isn't helped by the total lack of laughs in this `comedy'. Few if any of the lines are funny (mainly because they totally lack any sort of charm or wit) but what makes it worse is that the actors are playing to the laughs! There are plenty of scenes where gaps seem to have been left in dialogue or in routines to allow the audience to finish rolling in the aisles. These may only be a split second long, but in the absence of laughter they feel longer.I watched this with another Caine comedy – `Without a Clue'. That was average as well but his performance really lifted it. Here he can't do the same – his character is charmless and occasionally resorts to mugging to get by (witness his dancing after returning from Rio). Similarly Maggie Smith has nothing to do and feels too snobbish to be likeable. The relationship between the two is also dry and it's unfortunate that their `eternal' relationship is supposed to be the model for true love. Spader, who can do good given the chance, seems totally out of his depth with his two classy co-stars. He resorts to doing some sort of sub-par Hugh Grant impersonation – full of stuttering and blinking when under pressure, except he can't make it seem charming in the same way that Grant can (when he's on form) and his character quickly becomes shallow and uninteresting.The film collapses to a happy ending at a new years party – but by then any interest I had in the characters had evaporated. The film is only about 90 minutes long – but it felt like 3 hours, every scene felt dull and dragged out.Overall, even with Caine, Smith and Sam Shepherd filling out an impressive cast list – this totally fails to impress. It's not that it's the worst film ever made – but it's an average story, with average characters, average performances and comedy that totally misses the mark. The end result? A dull, unfunny film that is impossible to care about or enjoy.

Gardiner if it weren't for the incredible talent that both MAGGIE SMITH and MICHAEL CAINE possess this movie would not be worth watching. seeing them both together is an ABSOLUTE TREAT. maggie smith is a genius, if she wants to make you laugh she makes you laugh, if she wants to make you think she makes you think and if she wants to make you sad she makes you sad - and often she can do this all in one scene. james spader doesn't seem to know what to do most of the time and that polly walker takes herself much too seriously... she looks good but come on - stop acting like you LOOK GOOD and start acting like a real person. the story itself seems to go in too many directions at once. there are so many elements you WISH were more developped and are not.

FredNurk This movie has a good cast although one would think from the way James Spader acts that the Director really wanted Hugh Grant for the part. Indeed the actress playing his girlfriend looks a lot like Elizabeth Hurley. She has an accent that hints of Julie Christie from "Heaven Can Wait." This movie is not in that league either. A previous reviewer emphasized how nice the house was. If anything the house should have had the leading role. Maggie Smith and Michael Caine overacted in the context of their roles as old thespians but with such a lame script even those greats couldn't do much with it. Behind their professionalism was the hint that even the greats have to appear in stinkers sometimes.