ThiefHott Too much of everything

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

nqure Meg & Nick are a middle-class couple travelling for a nostalgic trip to Paris. The first brief scene on the Eurostar sets the tone, a couple who bicker & get on each other's nerves.Paris, the city of lovers becomes an ironic background for a couple whose sense of familiarity brings contempt. A young couple walk hand-in-hand as Meg & Nick sit bickering. Paris, though, also represents the Bohemian, radical ideas & sexual liberation.Each manages to push & press the buttons that winds the other up. Meg hurts Nick physically, once in a scene that had me genuinely roaring as she pushes him away when he wants to spank her & he falls over on the cobbles, hurting his knee. As the film reaches the final act, there is a danger that she might hurt him emotionally. I didn't pick up all the Beckettian nuances on a first viewing but there are there: the (obvious) visit to the dramatist's grave at Montparnasse; the quotation; & Nick's montage containing his photo in the hotel.The first Act revolves around them walking around Paris, a visit to a restaurant before an escapade leads to the turning point where Nick bumps into an old college acquaintance, Morgan (excellently played by Goldblum). Morgan has an exciting Parisian lifestyle as a published author; a younger wife smitten with him; & a glittering circle of interesting friends. The two men even look different: one suave, smartly casual, a bundle of energy, the other bearded, bespectacled & weather-beaten. Morgan is a gourmand tucking into life with zest. At the party, Meg meets Jean Pierre, who offers the glimpse of another more radical possibility.In the final act, Meg & Nick are apart, underlining the gap between them following an argument provoked by Nick's jealousy. Meg's rancour is an antidote to Eve's, (Morgan's current wife), gushing idealism. Meanwhile, Nick encounters a teenager in his bedroom away from the party, who turns out to be Morgan's son from his first marriage. The two bond. This scene is pivotal. Nick lets slip his love & need for Meg just at the point when it looks like she could hurt him. The final set-piece is Nick's self-deprecating confessional at the dinner-table where he swats aside Morgan's effusive praise of him to reveal the true state of things in his life. What shines through is Nick's authenticity, "The self I hide in myself" & in that moment, we see that the core of the man Meg fell in love with, remains. As in 'Waiting for Godot', it's like optimism & pessimism being shackled together (The characters in Words & Music are perhaps more appropriate, the source of the quotation. I'm not familiar with the play but Nick is associated with music, Bob Dylan & Nick Drake) . Misery is funny. Yet the great tragic absurdist is also quoted by Nick on love: "Do we mean love when we say love?' The film is about a lot of darkness before the light. There is more to love. Meg is cool & detached yet she feeds Nick her soup in the first restaurant where he sits contentedly: "This is where I want to be forever." Meg soon undercuts this feeling of well-being. Before the party, she picks out a suave blazer with care. And at the party following Nick's confessional, she makes a confession of her own that salvages things between them. This becomes a positive end of sorts, though Kureishi in the foreword to his script states the end is provisional "& the questions they ask have to be confronted repeatedly".The film is, in many ways, a two-hander, a study of a marriage where each partner may want something different from the other depending on their temperament. The performances by Broadbent & Duncan capture the nuances of each of their characters. It is a suitable companion piece to Julie Delphy's witty 'Two Days in Paris". Delpy even looks like a younger Lindsay Duncan, with high cheek bones & luminous porcelain skin & cool demeanour . In that film, Delpy plays a Parisian with a neurotic American boyfriend so that the film is also about cross continent relations. Like 'Le Weekend', the couple too face an emotional turning point, and both end with each couple dancing, a temporary resolution immersed in the moment.

nando1301-1 Comedy? This is about as funny as a double feature of Macbeth and Hamlet, but with more drama... The film chronicles the very British and very neurotic marital relationship of the two main characters. Both Broadbent and Duncan deliver good performances, but it's the script that spoils it all.I confess to not being British enough, nor neurotic enough, to identify with the characters... perhaps some people might find their situation interesting; I found it irritating. The characters are irritated with each other, constantly criticizing and complaining about everything; theirs is a textbook neurotic relationship, in which they get their kicks out of the sado-masochistic interactions they have with each other. All in all, a wonderful theme for a marriage counselors convention, but hardly a comedy, not even a "dramatic comedy"... There is nothing to smile about.And it's all so boringly predictable... They arrive at the same hotel in which they had their honeymoon 30 years earlier. Naturally, it doesn't look the same (like their marriage...), the rooms have been painted in a different color, and Meg hates it. Off she runs, with pathetic Nick trailing after her and, throwing money repeatedly at a cab driver (what symbolism: money is no object, we're just throwing it away!...) directly to the Plaza Athenée, the most expensive hotel in Paris, where she gives them their passports and credit card, saying literally: "money is no object". When the hotel receptionist tells them that the hotel is fully booked, they moan about taking the Eurostar back to London... As if there would be no other hotel room available in Paris: it's either their honeymoon two-star place of 30 years ago, or the Plaza Athenée... Nothing else will do.That's when my irritation went over my threshold and I found it difficult to engage with the characters.Even more predictably, on they go to visit... the Pére Lachaise cemetery, symbolizing their own failed marriage and their lives coming to an end. And the trip was supposed to be an attempt to revive their relationship?...It gets worse: at a dinner in an ex-pupil's home, when the host makes a beautiful speech thanking Nick for being an inspiring mentor, Nick retorts with a speech of his own stating that actually his life is over, he's been sacked by the university and his wife does not love him, he is a complete failure. Meg later tells him that his speech was brilliant... It seems to fit into the overall self commiseration that characterizes their lifestyle.I can understand all of it as an accurate description of a neurotic relationship... Just forgive me for not being excited about it. And please, please... do not bill this as a comedy!

Franklie Oh my goodness. We wanted to give up on this movie the whole way through. It was slow and we had a hard time connecting enough with the characters to want to watch them. We understood their angst, but they weren't likable enough to want to devote 1h30m of our lives to watching. The language was below par and the screenplay was one annoying thing after another. We made the mistake of watching it on Netflix instead of DVD. On DVD we could have watched on fast-forward. BUT.. We really like these actors and we really liked the beautiful camera shots of Paris and throwing a Tom Petty song in there helped too, so we stuck with it. The story basically shows a double nervous breakdown and the last few minutes of the film were finally fun and lovely. We'd like to see what happens next in the story, as long as that story moves along a bit quicker and the language is more appealing.

TxMike We saw this on DVD, the extra is interesting as the writer and director (who also directed Notting Hill) had the idea for the story then went and spent a weekend in Paris to see what couples might do, to make the story seem more real. And that is a strong point of the movie, it seems very real.The couple are Lindsay Duncan as Meg and Jim Broadbent as Nick. They have been married for 30 years and it seems their relationship has gotten a bit stale. So maybe a romantic weekend in Paris will rejuvenate things. But not so fast, there are some things boiling under the surface with both of them, making it a quite challenging weekend.A pleasant surprise is Jeff Goldblum. I always enjoy his characters, he has a way about acting that takes a plain role and makes it more interesting than it has a right to be. Here he is Morgan, an old friend of Nick's from college. Morgan seems very well off, and very cheerful with his pretty, young, and pregnant second wife. He assumes Nick is equally well off. In fact when Nick and Meg went to Morgan's place in the evening by invitation, with a number of guests, mostly intellectuals, Morgan proceeds to explain how Nick was his influence as a young man, how knowing Nick and the things he stood for propelled Morgan to success in his career. But Nick gave a quite different talk, and put everything into perspective. Things weren't going well at all.At first it seems Nick and Meg are not age-matched very well but in fact the actors are almost the same age, he about 63 during filming and she about 62. They were celebrating 30 years. My wife and I enjoyed it, in fact it allowed us to reminisce about our own trips to Paris and other parts of Europe, dealing with the foreign languages, the strange hotels and strange menus. All the main actors are superb.SPOILERS: What Meg didn't know was Nick had been sacked from his job as a small college professor. Apparently he told a girl "If you would spend less time on your hair and more time on your studies..." and a complaint got him booted. What Nick didn't know is Meg was fed up with her teaching job and wanted to do something different, and it seemed that may mean leaving Nick completely. Which would have devastated him. But in the process they clearly realize how much they love each other, even though they found they could not pay their very high hotel bill when it was time to leave. Morgan to the rescue!!