Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

lolalaska This was a surprise. A friend taped this from an HBO showing (2007). It is hysterical in a 'Mad Mad Mad Mad World' sort of way. Lots of 'star cameos'; quick references that warrant watching over and over to get them all and to id a few of the cameos. Fran Drescher is a scream. I had never heard of this "it's got Woody Allen in it, but it's not a Woody Allen movie" little number. Very funny, irreverent with great potential to be a cult classic. Difficult to track down for purchase. A must have for the sarcastic at heart. Not for children, however most of the comments and references would fly over the heads of most under about 6-8 with the exception of the classic finger reference.

Jonathon Dabell Woody Allen's output of late has undoubtedly been poorer than his works of genius from the 70s and 80s. But Picking Up The Pieces marks an absolute low-point for Woody the actor (as he didn't direct it - Alfonso Arau did - he at least doesn't have to shoulder the blame in THAT department). Arau's religious comedy is insulting on several levels, most notably in its tasteless spoofing of Catholicism and also in its totally ludicrous storyline, which narrates magical, fantastical events but doesn't have the correct tone for a magical, fantastical film. How so many good actors were lured into this debacle is hard to say. They must all look back on this ill-advised foray with a great deal of shame.Butcher Tex Cowley (Woody Allen) kills and dismembers his adulterous wife Candy (Sharon Stone). He drives out into the New Mexico wilderness and buries her various body parts, before returning to his trailer in Texas. Unknown to Tex, one of Candy's severed hands fell from his truck during his journey to her burial spot. A blind old woman trips over the hand and miraculously regains her sight; believing the hand to be a miraculous gift - perhaps even the hand of the Holy Virgin - she takes it back to her village El Nino. Here, the local church is run by disillusioned priest Leo Jerome (David Schwimmer) who is preparing to quit his faith in order to be with the beautiful village hooker Desi (Maria Grazi Cucinotta). With the arrival of the severed hand, other villagers suddenly ask for - and are granted - personal miracles. Leo suddenly has to face up to the fact that God and faith may be for real. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous town mayor Machado (Cheech Marin) senses an opportunity to transform his run-down border village into a tourist trap, using the hand to lure in thousands of miracle-seeking pilgrims and holiday-makers. But the hand also attracts the attention of psycho-cop Bobo (Kiefer Sutherland). Bobo was one of Candy's many lovers, and he is determined to avenge her death by retrieving the hand and using it as forensic evidence to put Tex in the electric chair.Virtually nothing works in this film. The script is an unclear, unfocused mess; the acting is indifferent; the jokes are alternately unfunny and offensive; the pacing is dull....in fact, the whole film seems to spit in the viewer's face, such is the contempt with which the audience is treated. Whether you take the film as a spoof, a black comedy or an anti-Catholic satire, it fails miserably. In fact, it fails UTTERLY, and may well be one of the worst films of the 21st Century thus far. If it's a toss-up between watching Picking Up The Pieces again or bathing in a cess-pool, I'll be opting for the latter every time.

Bawoof As a moderate but open-minded Catholic, I found this piece of trash particularly insulting not just to religion but also to my intelligence No need to recap the story, but what I find so ironic is that if this film had insulted Judaism, Islam, Holocaust survivors, or AIDS patients, the liberal elite (you know who you are) would've had a field day shouting "racist bigotry" or "filled with hatred" or "could induce anti-semitism throughout the world." (something like when Mel Gibson's last film was released) I don't get it--Mel Gibson makes a film and the elite doesn't want us to see it, yet "Picking Up the Pieces" gets made & if you're religious (esp. Catholic) and offended then you're just supposed to sit there and "take a joke." Can you say "HYPOCRISY!?" Why am I not surprised? Oh well, despite the supposed "hilarious" nature of this film that went straight to cable and video, it seems that the Christians got the last laugh: just how many HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS has Mel Gibson's movie made so far in just eight weeks anyway?

rezmo-mdb Maybe it's just the mood I'm in but after a failed first attempt at viewing this film (lasted about 10 minutes) I just finished seeing the "hole" thing and thought "what a great WA film ala the pre-serious Woody phase that he didn't write! This film was obviously not done with the BIG audience in mind, but out of love for the absurd to a sublime degree. Over the top puns abound in a truly profound way. Like for instance, "You can save your ass, or you can save your soul. But you can't save both. You choose, ass....soul...etc.,etc. I can't believe the many stars in this cast (albeit off-ctr types) did this for the money, so they must have had a blast making it. And c'mon folks, tell me you didn't love to see Kieffer hung up and beaten like a pinata with fireworks going off on his body. I hven't seen cast interviews, so I'm not as informed as some of the commenteers here are, but the overall message (last words of Woody)of this movie is not to be ignored: "f__k em if they can't take a joke". Yeah, the production was cheezy, but it fit so well. The patchwork editing just may have been intentional.... I can easily see how people panned this film. But, no offense intended, maybe you take yourself a bit too seriously.PS: the quip about Jesus' party getting out of hand _was_ Lenny Bruce's comment as stated by Woody in the film.Ahhhhhh