Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Raysing But it's boring. It is finally done, so good. There it is. Now, glad it rests, for posterity. Kubrick's version has a timeless quality that this sadly does not. It is a parody of itself, even though it's more faithful to King's book.Kid is awful here. Really bad casting decision. Imo)5 bags of popcorn and a windows 95 boot disk

Larissa Pierry (tangietangerine) I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's novel, it definitely makes the list of my top favorite books, so I was delighted to watch another adaptation, this time with a fair amount of similarities to it. It couldn't be different, seeing that King himself was involved with the script, and it kind of gives the feeling he's answering back to Kubrick: "this is how I imagined my creation to be." I rated it high because it's so much like the novel, and although I absolutely love Kubrick's version, it's also very fulfilling to a fan when the book is adapted the way you want it! Although I rate it highly, I'm aware of its problems. For one, the thing that got on my nerves (all the time) was Courtland Mead's acting. His nasal and annoying voice, his mouth constantly hanging open, his mop top hair, besides, he's too old to be anything like the character in the novel, but that's the least. Danny Torrance is supposed to be a likable character, and to me he is adorable in his 5 year-old naive wisdom and braveness. I didn't get any of it in the mini series, and Danny is basically the main character, without him, it just doesn't work. I wonder why King and etc. chose this boy.Apart from that, Steven Weber is one of the main reasons I liked it so much. I know about his sitcom past, but his work in this saves it from being a total disaster. I'd say his perfect John Doe quality is what made me think of him as the next best thing to the "actual" Jack Torrance. Rebecca DeMornay gives an average performance, I'm sure she is exactly how Stephen King thought Wendy in his head, but if it was any other blonde actress playing her part, it wouldn't have made any difference to me. I was happy with the feature of almost all of the scenes from the novel, especially the (in)famous one-liner: "Come down here and take your medicine!".Budget limitations and the length tend to turn people off. This is the problem with Stephen King's movie adaptations, because certain aspects of his writing are not meant to be watched, only imagined. It's the case of the hedge animals (or the Wendigo in Pet Sematary, I was glad they decided to let it out), they're important to the story, but the terrible special effects just made me cringe. Also, I was OK about that additional epilogue of Danny graduating, but why the "kissing kissing, that's what I've been missing" bit?. It's so cheesy, and it seems it doesn't serve any other purpose than adding some cheap sentimentalism to Jack-Danny's relationship, when it doesn't need any. In my opinion, Jack was redeemed when he stayed in and fought the hotel as hard as he could, and that was what saved his family. Anyway, I guess it comes with the job, you have to have some kind of explicit emotional undertone in order to make it likable for general audiences. Not all of it is made of die-hard fans of the novel like me, ha.

Payback1016 First let me just say I love both versions equally. However thing have to be addressed. First and foremost, the Shining regardless of who you think did better has and will always be Stephen King's baby. It was meant to symbolize his struggle with Alcoholism which was the main theme of the book. When Kubrick did his version, it stopped being "Stephen King's The Shining." And became "Stanley Kubrick's The Shining." The reason Stephen hated it so much because it stopped being his struggle and started being Kubrick's Art. This miniseries was simply stating "Stanley I am gonna take back what's mine." And even though the public was divided by it, he did what he could to do so. The Kubrick version was meant to be ambiguous and keep us guessing and interpreting it till the cows come home. The King version on the other hand, made sense and that's what most hated about it. You can't expect King to be ambiguous unless he wants to be ambiguous, he is Stephen King not Stanley Kubrick. Let the baby have his bottle and find something to like about this.

Rueiro I am not going to compare this piece of rubbish to Kubrick's film; too many viewers have already done that.In my opinion, "The shining" is one of King's few novels worth reading. Some parts of it are slow-paced and boring, with the usual long descriptions of the characters' past and misfortunes in which King always likes to indulge himself for dozens of pages. That is the most irritating thing about his books. It is OK if you are writing "War and Peace" or "Gone with the Wind", but not for a horror flick. You should stick to the main story instead of creating sub-plot family melodramas.Anyway, "The Shining" is not an easy book to adapt, and only a very competent screenwriter who knows his trade and a film-maker equally effective can deliver a good movie out of the book. Kubrick, who was both things, did it, and that was it. They could try and make a dozen remakes of the story in the next one hundred years and they wouldn't get it any better. I re-read the novel very recently, and then I watched King's only approved and much blessed official adaptation in order to see how true to its title is. I felt pity. It is more faithful to the book than Kubrick's, I gave it that, but still it is not as faithful as the title and all the publicity initially promise, and that is cheating the spectator. All right, it shows Jack's alcoholic past in flashbacks, but was that really necessary in order to understand what happens later at the hotel? Also it shows Tony, and what for? In the book Danny only sees him once or twice and always from very far away, a blurred shadow. Why turning him into a character that is popping up in the screen every half an hour? He can't help Danny at all but only keeps telling him he shouldn't have come to the hotel, so what's the point? It is bloody irritating, and the actor looks silly!Then, there is the topiary. I laughed at the ignorance and ingenuity of many viewers who rave about this remake and put Kubrick's film down only because it doesn't show the hedge animals... Dear cultured critics: back in 1980 CGI was still sci-fi fantasy, and the only way to have shot that sequence would have been by combining live action with animation (go and check "Mary Poppins" to see what I'm talking about if you don't follow me). So Kubrick did very well by leaving the episode out instead of making a silly thing that would have looked laughable in what is supposed to be a a horror chiller. And that is precisely one of the biggest follies this adaptation has, and even the CGI is cheap and badly done and brings more laughs than shivers because the animals look like bird droppings on the snow!Then the cast is terrible. Someone mentioned that a monkey with a telephone book would have done a better casting, and he is right. The actors seem like they never bothered to read the book in order to understand what the story is about and get to know their characters. The kid was just that, so we can't blame him. But Rebecca de Mornay and the fellow who plays Jack (who is he, by the way?) are as plain as cardboard cut-outs, and the same goes for the guy doing Grady, who instead of looking menacing he is a total duck. And Van Peebles looks like he just popped out of a Busby Berkeley musical, I was expecting him to burst singing and tap-dancing any second. The only one of whom it can be said gives a decent performance is Elliott Gould, who plays Ullmann as the cynical, sarcastic, tight-fist snob who thinks of "his" hotel as the greatest thing on earth, just as described in the book. And as for Stephen King's surprise cameo as the orchestra conductor, I didn't know whether to laugh or to be angry because he looks like a Loony Tunes caricature of Xavier Cugat.And then, the director of this mess seems to have thought himself to be a new Stanley Kubrick and tried to imitate the master's trademark of slow tracking shots that precede key events. Didn't he have any self- respect? And the ending... so happy-ever-after that is laughable, and so overloaded with syrup that it could kill a diabetic just from looking at it. This multi-million dollar egotistic heap made only to satisfy King's ego is just a waste of time, money and celluloid.