Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Wizard-8 The packaging for "D.E.B.S." makes it look like it's a slam-bang girls with guns movie with plenty of action. In actual fact, it's anything but. Although the movie deals with young and hot-looking women who work for a secret agent organization, there isn't a terrible amount of action. Instead, the movie concentrates more on a lesbian relationship that forms between one of the agents and the bad gal she and her fellow agents are pursuing. Sounds promising, but sadly this aspect of the movie never gets beyond a PG-13 level. As it turns out, no aspect of the remaining portions of the movie are particularly well done. The development of the other characters is very poor, with no other characters really standing out. The poor writing extends to the story as well; the secret agent organization is lacking detail, and there are some incomprehensible moments like how the female villain gets away when she's cornered two-thirds into the movie. It certainly doesn't help that the entire package is surprisingly shoddy, from the film crew being seen in reflections on windows to some absolutely awful special effects. In fact, the whole movie looks and feels like a low budget children's TV show like "Power Rangers Dino Charge". You'd be better off watching an episode of that show instead of this movie, since although the show is just as dumb as this movie, it at least offers some good action (and any episode only runs 30 minutes instead of being feature length.) To sum up, it's very easy to see why this movie was barely released to theaters.

cosmicly At first blush, D.E.B.S. may seem like the sort of superficial sexual exploitation movie that used to flood Drive-In Theatres (aka "Passion Pits" and "Lust Lots") forty or fifty years ago.And undoubtedly, any proponent of California Proposition 8 (which bans same-sex marriage) will find this movie's favorable portrayal of a "lesbian love affair" highly offensive and downright immoral.But D.E.B.S. has three things going for it, and those three things help to explain the large number of favorable reviews of D.E.B.S. on IMDb.1) Controversy aside, D.E.B.S. is a fantastic "buddy" film. The lengths to which Scud will go-- to help his friend Lucy to heal her broken heart and to win the object of her love-- is truly heartwarming. And the recurring cattiness and rivalry among the D.E.B.S. throughout the film is trumped--indeed totally nullified--when Max tells Lucy "If you break her heart I will hunt you down and kill you." 2) The acting in D.E.B.S. is remarkable, and in fact it is astounding to see so many terrific performances in such a low budget film. A movie with this sort of budget is generally characterized by nauseous doses of "over acting," but in this film, each and every performer seems inspired to treat their parts not only with humor but also with a "labor of love" spirit which helps to explain why so many people genuinely enjoy this film.3) And while it is doubtful that anti-gay audiences would ever be able to view this film objectively, the fact is that some timeless universal themes are treated with precision and directness: How important is it for people to be honest with themselves? Are professional values more valid than personal values? And in the final analysis, is it a myth or a reality that Love can conquer all?

winstonfg I'm a moderately intelligent bloke, and I can think of a million reasons why I *shouldn't* like this movie ... but I do.For one thing, it's unashamedly SILLY; and I like that. For another, like most good comedy, it's acted straight (and surprisingly well), and it's funny. Third, it's a spoof with a twist (unfortunately, given away in the ads) - which can be magic, can be tragic. In this case, it works; and it's sweetly done.My only complaint is that they didn't use more of Devon Aoki, who proves, once again, that she's the Asian community's answer to Wednesday Addams. Holland Taylor is great as the "headmistress" of these short-skirted DHS hoodlums, and Jill Ritchie at 30 is completely believable as the insecure nebbish teen of the group.I suspect it's a once-off, and I sincerely hope they don't try to do a sequel. It's also definitely more of a teen flick than for someone of my advanced years; but as between this and the re-vamp of Charlie's Angels, I'd take this one every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

hnt_dnl I expected D.E.B.S. (2004) to be a really silly parody of spy movies and teen flicks with tons of references to pop culture, kind of like the NAKED GUN films. Surprisingly, it is really kind of neither, although it leans a bit more on the "teen" side with situations reminiscent of what one would see in teen-oriented movies, like teen angst, peer pressure, popularity, and cliques. The squad of spy girls in the film are obviously not teenagers (I mean in real life), and I guess it shouldn't matter since that is just a cover and they only interact within the girls at the D.E.B.S. school and with their superiors. Yet it is kind of distracting as I expected these girls to at least remind me of teenagers; they all seemed a bit too adult for me to believe they were real teens; they were just 20-somethings (a couple looked closer to 30!) dressed in schoolgirl outfits. Also, the spy angle is underplayed as well, with only slight scenes of fake-looking guns, CGI gadgetry, and the typical "chief-relaying-orders-to-agents" moments early on. What D.E.B.S. really is...is a love story! And a very well done one at that.The love story is between the main characters, D.E.B. Amy (played by the beautiful and refreshing Sara Foster) and world-class criminal Lucy (the stunningly gorgeous and hot Jordana Brewster). What I like about the lesbian love story is that it is done very tastefully and sincerely, with genuine sparks and chemistry between Foster and Brewster. It could have easily been portrayed as just a lustfest between 2 such stunning beauties, but it was not. It was really sweet and charming.But that's the problem. The love story was so good, and the parody so poor that they felt like they should have just been 2 different movies. It actually does TRY to be a parody with some fairly humorous moments sprinkled throughout it's running time, but the parody overall was very flat and so underdone that it all just seemed uneasy. While the love story was interesting, the "professions" of the lead characters didn't ring true for me. Lucy didn't come across as being a criminal mastermind or deadly and Amy didn't really show any signs that she was a soon-to-be top notch secret agent. They just seemed like two regular women that were into each other. Their conversations were definitely intriguing and well-written, but they should have been in an entirely different movie.The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Jill Ritchie (as D.E.B Janet) pretty much steals the movie playing the (supposedly) not-so-bright girl hiding Amy's secret and I found her to actually rise above the material and deliver a knockout comedic performance. Jimmi Simpson is underused and funny also as Lucy's right-hand man Scud, and the ever-reliable Holland Taylor comes through as D.E.B. commandant Ms. Petrie, showing the young girls how a pro does it. The weakest links acting-wise for me were Meagan Good (as D.E.B. squad leader Max) and Devon Aoki (as thick-accented, hard-to-understand D.E.B. Dominique). Good was extremely wooden and rather unconvincing as the "smart" D.E.B. and Aoki was just annoying to listen to and treated as simply a "sex addict". And their characters really needed to be better and more fleshed out to help this film be better.A lot of reviews have compared this to CHARLIE'S ANGELS, maybe on the surface, but it reminded me more of movies like CLUELESS and MEAN GIRLS, without the wit and bite of those classic modern teen films. The "spy" parts, such as they are, just feel thrown in to make the movie seem like a riff on spy movies, but it doesn't have the feeling of a "spy" flick at all. It could just as easily be a teen romantic drama. The love story is daring and excellently done, but that's about it.