Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

michellez-82344 This movie was obviously enjoyed by a number of people based on the reviews but I suspect that a good deal of the enjoyment was of a nostalgic nature, older reviewers fondly remembering a movie seen in their youth. It reminds me of some of the old classic Walt Disney family movies of the 1960s that would feature wholesome stories, young children coming of age, and fairly innocuous, harmless adventures. At their worst, overly sentimental and cloyingly sweet with a somewhat heavy-handed moral lesson. THIS particular film hardly even seems to have those redeeming features or a message beyond the girls still being friends and one girl's dad becoming a proper father, all previous issues magically resolved. Although even there the 'awww factor' is dulled by the last lines of dialogue between the 2 young girls: "You know what I'd like?" "What?" "A mouth like a CRIMSON GASH!" "Hey, that's a cool idea!" Continuing to apply more makeup than the average woman owns. Sorry, that line is just 'ew' and a jarring transition from girlish hijinx to more "adult" things. (I get the feeling that the makers of this film may have had in mind a film of a much more mature nature than the film that was made.)One reviewer who did enjoy this entitled her review: "The Giddy Magic of Girls." I would have said, "The annoying antics of brats" but this movie did not work for me, obviously. Two negatives were that the movie was touted by cable channels as featuring Peter Sellers or Angela Landsbury headlining. TWOHO does NOT "feature" either of those actors. That sets it up to be a disappointment from that perspective. So if you planned to watch it because those two are listed as the stars in this film, don't.Mr. Sellers IS important to the plot but hardly featured and not particularly hilarious as others have alleged. Amusing at best. He does change accents throughout but for no good reason other than apparent boredom with his part in this extremely limited role. Ms. Landsbury is notably absent from the first half of the movie, doesn't have many lines and seems to have been miscast somewhat curiously as something of a femme fatale to Mr. Sellers' "worldly" concert pianist. Angela Landsbury is a quite good actress but seems past it in 1964 for such a role. She DOES play well as an unhappily married woman who is frustrated that her child is interfering with her own fun. As someone who has NO maternal instincts whatsoever and very little loyalty to her husband, let alone the family.The story centers on 2 young ladies, in their mid teens, and on their developing friendship. To some extent they seem to me to be infantilized, depicted playing games well below their perceived age, and mentality, such as Follow the Leader, each jumping over things in turn. (And what's up with the crotch shots? Are camera angles from the ground as the girls jump hydrants, etc., splay-legged in skirts really necessary?) Pursuing pointless pranks that only elementary school children would find funny. The girls then go from that very childlike/childish behaviour to obsessing about and stalking a much older male, Mr. Henry Orient, who is apparently a philanderer specializing in married women. The girls have unusual home situations which would be revolutionary for those times, if explored: 2 unrelated women raising one child, no one really raising the other but this fertile area is only cursorily covered as it relates to the "quirkiness" of each girl and in the latter case, as a way to highlight what an unpleasant character Ms. Landsbury plays. This movie just isn't particularly funny. It is that rather odd brand of mildly amusing story, that apparently passed for humorous in the olden days, with an adequate script no one bothered to improve on or edit. Neither Sellers nor the other adults have much to work with, the situations do not ever seem intriguing, and the girls' pranks just seem idiotic and off-putting. It's just a movie but what moron falls for the movie's final prank and is going to just accept the story/lie that 2 completely dissimilar looking girls are Jane Mansfield's daughters and that they are simply waiting by a random shop for the ostensible "kidnappers" to release a famous star to them, no ransom, in plain view on an otherwise busy street? (Although as with most scenes, the streets are oddly deserted of people.) And what adult alerts the police based on this slip of a story and in what world do the police believe such a gullible adult and such a far-fetched tale of kidnapping, mobilizing a dozen men to capture no one? All of this scene played mostly in an oddly straight manner, although Mr. Sellers does attempt slapstick as he retreats to his apartment when the swat team leaps into action, somehow mistaking his lone paramour for the kidnappers, ignoring the fact that there is no kidnappee.As a comedy, this is feeble stuff, barely eliciting a few smiles, the occasional chuckle. If this is a story about family, and exploring the travails inherent within families and all human relations, it is all too shallowly explored and not at all in a satisfying way. Neither zany nor introspective, it tries for both and fails at both. If you enjoy the old Disney Family Movies, and don't mind the inevitable, telegraphed happy ending without much of an explanation about how they got there, you may like this. If you think you are going to see a lot of Angela Landsbury at her dramatic best or Peter Sellers at his zaniest, you will be disappointed. For what it's worth, the two young ladies are quite good, (Oddly neither of them had much of a career in acting afterward.), but that is not enough to carry this overlong, repetitive, trite, stale yet implausible tale.

rodrig58 This movie is truly gorgeous, delicious. It's funny and very touching at the same time, a simple and fabulous scenario. The two young actresses, Tippy Walker (Val) and Merrie Spaeth (Gil), are unrivaled natural, something like pure rain. Paula Prentiss makes a real memorable role. Just as Angela Lansbury (in October 2017 she will be 92 years old), a role like I've never seen before, maybe her best. Tom Bosley, Phyllis Thaxter and Bibi Osterwald are excellent. Last but not least at all, the sacred monster, the greatest comic actor of all time (well, along with Chaplin and Benny Hill), Mister Peter Sellers. Adorable! The piano scene with Paula Prentiss, when describing her body parts in musical arrangements, is simply brilliant. I saw almost all of the films directed by George Roy Hill, all masterpieces, especially "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973), both with two exceptional Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Not less masterpieces are: "The Little Drummer Girl" (1984), "The World According to Garp" (1982) and "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1972). "A Little Romance" (1979), another gorgeous film by him, resembles the theme and atmosphere of "The World of Henry Orient". Deserves more than 10 stars!

Ritag2 The World of Henry Orient is lots of fun to watch. Both Paula Prentiss and Peter Sellers are very funny. Peter Sellers uses a great New York accent when he is being his real self, and Paula Prentiss' jittery reaction to his tries to seduce her are hilarious. Angela Lansbury is the ultimate bad mother and is somewhat like her character in The Manchurian Candidate. The two young girls who play the main characters are wonderful, and if they had a career after this movie it wasn't a memorable one. Their characters are portrayed a little too youthful for fourteen yearolds, even for the early sixties, but both of the characters are interesting and lots of fun to watch as they run around the New York City of the early 1960's. This is a great movie to watch when you want to forget the real world and step back into an America of a bygone era.

Bill Slocum Peter Sellers may be the bait, but two girls supply the hook that keeps this coming-of-age comedy in people's minds 40 years on.Sellers has the title role as Henry Orient, a pianist more interested in practicing his lines than his scales, but the film's focus is on a lonely young Manhattanite named Gil (Merrie Spaeth) and her new pal Val (Elizabeth "Tippy" Walker), two adolescents who decide to make Val's crush on Orient into the secret center of an adventure-filled friendship."Henry Orient" is a film of two parts co-existing uneasily at times. Val and Gil's bond occupies the realm of real life, with Walker and Spaeth giving spot-on performances that seem spontaneous and alive to every moment. The best scene in the movie by far, very much in line with the "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence in the same year's "Hard Day's Night," shows the pair running along a city block, "splitzing" over fire hydrants and tryke-riding boys, their eyes alight with joy as they literally rise over their city surroundings. It's a captivating exercise in what scholars would call "pure cinema." If the rest of the film doesn't rise to that level, it never entirely disappoints, either.Sellers' sequences are weaker. He's actually quite enjoyable to watch, doing one of his best voice performances as a Brooklynite who affects a French-Italian accent to charm the ladies (listen carefully and you will hear his Brooklyn undertone throughout) but he and Paula Prentiss as the married object of his desires seem to be in a completely different movie, playing a broad farce at odds with the real, sometimes gut-wrenching tone of the rest of the film.This could be a bigger problem but for Elmer Bernstein's lilting yet driving score, featuring one of the most arresting themes I've heard in film, which seems to carry Val and Gil from one delirious moment to the next with complete abandon while allowing room for darker, contemplative passages. Director George Roy Hill had a gift for employing music at the right moment (see "The Sting"), and the score of "Henry Orient" is a secret strength as it skates over the thinner plot elements.More obviously a strength is the script by Nora and Nunnelly Johnson, which really captures a sense of how young people talk, goofily, quickly and all-at-once, skipping over the stuff that doesn't matter, like when Val and Gil first meet at their ritzy school. Val asks Gil if she likes being there.Gil tries to be diplomatic: "They say it's the finest girls' school in the country." "I don't, either," says Val.Or the priceless exchange they have when taking out a cigarette butt they cadged off of Orient's table during a midday stalk. "No filter!" "He's not scared." One wishes the film found more to draw Orient and his youthful admirers together, though the detour into the state of Val's parental relations has merits of its own, especially with Angela Lansbury doing another of her classic nasty-Mommy turns.While it didn't set the world on fire in 1964 and, like its young stars, slipped off the radar screen too soon after its premiere, "Henry Orient" remains an engaging glimpse at American youth post-Salinger but pre-Beatles. Sidewalk placards still advertise color TV, while a rich girl's idea of rebellious fashion sense involves wearing a plaid skirt with a mink coat. Trends come and go, but feelings of the kind celebrated in "The World Of Henry Orient" live on.