Entrapment (DVD) > Reviews > The Mysterious Case of the Syrup and the Slapper

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Unmemorable
Soundtrack	Unmemorable

Advantages:	Apples'n'not many
Disadvantages:	Z - J and the Syrup

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I give you in the blue corner, the most eminent Syrup known to mankind (for those of you for whom the fabled Cock-erney-ese as popularised by such as Terry Venables [from El Tel to El Tyke, will wonders never cease?] is as impenetrable as Mrs D’s rice pudding, Syrup is yer Pearly King’s way of saying wig. Syrup of fig = wig, y’see, my dear? Cock-erney is surprisingly easy to master when you suss out the simple rules. In general, you just preface your desired phrase with ‘apples’, as in apples’n’pears = pears, apples’n’stairs = stairs, apples’n’Ruby Murray = Ruby Murray and apples’n’particularly crappy movie = particularly crappy movie, quite easy when you know how, eh?). Now this Syrup is one of the Scottish persuasion as modelled by the old stager apples’n’Sean Connery in such epics as all the Bond movies (well, at least the ones he appeared in, you jerk), The Hunt For Red October and, erm, well there must be some others … was he in Highglander? It’s a very distinguished Syrup, all grey peppery stuff, with that poxy widow’s peak at the front, but one which dominates every film in which it appears, and this one is no different…

IN THE RED CORNER, we find the Slapper, the very beautiful, but very knowing she is, Welsh harlot Catherine Zeta-Jones, she of the raven tresses, jump suit, daring acrobatics, a dark memory of being the sex interest in The Darling Buds of May (Perfick!!) and an even darker current status as the bedwarmer of Old Man Douglas. Ms (what’s that all about, eh?) Z-J is destined to play the desirable vamp in every film she features in from now until the end of time, and Entrapment is no different. In fact, she’s basically the only femme on show here AT ALL, as far as I can remember (which is about three feet six these days).

ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….

Now, I could halt this review here and save both you and me a lot of wasted time and heartache, but you know the dave27 pride won’t let me do that, so get ready for the latest instalment from the pen that the world wishes it could forget…

ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….

Well, you may need a bit more substantiation so here goes…

Entrapment features Sean Connery and Catherine Z-J as two art thieves (ho hum, getting bored already) in a kind of it takes a thief piece. Connery is Robert (Mac) Macdougal (don’t you hate the use of brackets or inverted commas around a nickname, and the gratuitous use of brackets to explain what’s going on?), who has earned his fulsome rep as the world’s greatest exponent of the dark arts. Z-J is Virginia (Gin) Baker (see, there it goes again, I bet you’re getting well pissed off by now), an insurance investigator with a nice line in catsuits and acrobatics, persuades her boss to let her try and catch him. As the said insurance firm stands to lose $24million on (Mac)’s latest stunt, (Gin) manages to do so without even the need to extract any of her desirable appendages from her figure hugging t[r]acksuit.

Apparently (Gin) is also strong willed, sassy and resourceful (didn’t you know she would be?) and has sussed out the way to trap (Mac), who is also elusive, crafty and well versed in the tricks of his trade (didn’t you know he would be?). The two master/mistress craftsmen/women strike up a love-hate-hate-care-don’t-care relationship (didn’t you know they would?) and agree on a joint caper involving all sorts of globetrotting (yet another surprise, treasures)

I won’t bore you any more (I know you’re drifting off already) with details of the banal, ultra-predictable plot, except to say that Ving Rhames (who was in Pulp Fiction and Mission Impossible, yeah you know him, the big, thickset black guy) plays (Mac)’s colleague Thibadeaux (Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo, STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT exchanging glances), Will Patton plays (Gin)’s boss Hector Cruz, and Maury Chaykin plays black marketer Conrad Greene.

You can get further details about the escapades of (Mac) and (Gin) at http://www.foxmovies.com/entrapment/ if you can really be bothered…

Release Date: April 30th, 1999
Video Release Date: November 23rd, 1999
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Jon Amiel(Copycat, The Man Who Knew Too Little, Sommersby; next is The Core)
Screenwriter: Ronald Bass (Black Widow, What Dreams May Come, Snow Falling on Cedars), William Broyles Junior

ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….

It really is the most frightful tosh imaginable and what I’ve offered you to date is eminently more excitable and attractive than this dire, abysmal film, the most banal, predictable, contrived hokum you could ever wish to see in your life.

You get the obligatory Mission Impossible tricks, the stuff with the lasers, the obligatory sexy acrobatics, and the obligatory sexy liaison between the Syrup and the Slapper, quite apples’n’vomit inducing, I think you’ll be forced to agree…

Seriously, Our Sean has been in a lot (lot, lot, lot) better films in his time and Z-J has dreamed about being in better films, and you’d have to be desperately keen on either of them to give this peculiarly dull affair the slightest room in your heart. I go apples’n’shaky at just the memory…

ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….
ENTRAPMENT IS CRAP….

By the way did I tell you this film is crap….