ThiefHott Too much of everything

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

tonyblass There is no reason to struggle with justifications, nor to reach for words to describe such an amateurish, hackneyed, stilted, banal ... well, there I go. Just suffice to it say that it is completely understandable why the talented Mr. Penn reportedly chose to stay drunk for every shooting day of this miserable, limp, pointless ... you see where I'm going. However bad you remember it to be, you must re-see it to believe it. Madonna is the worst American actress of all time without peer. The only thing she's done on film that is worth seeing is Evita (a music video) and "Desperately Seeking Susan" (in which she has little dialog and rolls her eyes a lot).

CTS-1 OK. So someone took an A-list actor and his famous singer/ part time kind of-sort of actress wife and decided that the movie would be carried on the weight of the names alone. Substitute "fiancee" for wife and one has Gigli.But it is not- it is Shanghai Surprise, possibly the most ill-conceived movie of the 1980's (and yes, I have seen "Hobgoblins.")This movie has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Ridiculous plot, painfully bad acting (Madonna as a missionary? She didn't buy it either, so she says her lines in a flat tone which just screams "get me out of this costume and get me my check"), cinematography worthy of an old episode of "Fantasy Island," lame ending.If, by some chance, you stumble across a copy of this in an unused corner of your local video rental store, call your local hazardous waste disposal hotline- do not rent it.But do not forget that this horror exists. Some people forgot- and thus "Gigli" was born.

Blueghost If nothing else this film has heart. I remember years ago all the hype that was injected into this film aimed at adolescent girls (i.e. Madonna fans), with the angle being that they would get to see the then infamous couple of Penn and Madonna frolic on the big silver screen.Well, it didn't take a rocket scientist to know where this film was headed. Like with all films when the hype exceeds previously good, yet unhyped, films you know something's up.The story itself isn't bad. It's kind of hackneyed at points, but that's its genre, and for what the film is it works after a fashion. There're only two real problems with this film;1) Madonna's then acting capabilities. It's not bad for a performer who's more used to singing and dancing, and it's unfair to expect anything more from her, but her acting talent then was what it was; lacking. Let's face it, she's a better singer and dancer than an actress, and this comes from a man who is not one of her fans.2)The second problem is the actual filming and execution of this film. The storie's there, the acting's there (Madonna not withstanding), and so forth, but there's little in the way of coverage or good cinematography. It's passing. It gets the job done. But the shots are those of a low budget flick. I believe there was a real opportunity to create atmosphere with good camera direction, but the focus of the film wasn't art so much as it was to capitalize on the then Madonna-Penn phenomenon (the film itself was riding the coat tails of Indiana Jones and The High Road to China films).And that last part is really too bad, because this film could've been much more. At least when I saw it on HBO years ago the print I saw then was clear, corrected, crisp and otherwise very viewable. Today I had a gander at the recently released DVD, and it looks like the owners of the property took an old 16mm broadcast print and had some fly by night tranfer company encode it on a DVD master; complete with a couple of scratches on grainy film stock.In short, if you didn't like it the first time, then don't bother with the DVD because it's even worse. If you got a spare evening, and your friend loaned you the disk, or it's available at the library, then give it a look, but don't expect too much.

westpac Who thought this up? It must have looked brilliant when they got Sean and Madonna in the same movie. Unfortunately Sean goes through the whole movie looking like a kid pretending he's in a movie and Madonna as usual just plays herself, badly. Nothing to see here, move along folks...