Wampyrii doesn't live here any more. Play nice y'all. :)
Wampyrii doesn't live here any more. Play nice y'all. :)
Member since:15.09.2000
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This is crap.
Three words which sum up the rest of this review and tell you all you need to know about the movie in my eyes. There are no redeeming features, nothing which can even drag this movie up to the heady heights of mediocrity even. Nope, its crap and it wears that particular crown more fittingly than any other movie I have seen in recent months.
The movie is touted by those who sit on their sweaty, fat, devious butts in Hollywood as being the latest piece of gross out comedy from the Farrely brothers whose previous works have included the superb Kingpin and Dumb And Dumber . In fact, it has very little indeed to do with either of these two but is instead written by a bunch of people who have worked with the Farrely brothers before on various projects, scrolling down the list of contributors you find the Farrelies mentioned as 'producers' which means they had a beer with the crew one evening. On paper this certainly does have the feel of one of their movies, the gross out humour, the embarrasing situations, the totally outlandish ideas, but the execution is dreadful. This movie is so bad that it becomes physically painful to watch.
The idea is as simple as it is complicated. It gives a new twist on one of Hollywood's oldest plots - boy meats girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. Here, Chris Klein meets Heather Graham, they fall in lust, shag like rabbits and then they find out that actually they are brother and
sister and Graham leaves town to marry a rich millionaire. Klein becomes the brunt of everybody's jokes in the town as the man who slept with his sister, but then finds out that it was all a trick by Graham's family to get her to leave him and marry the millionaire like they wanted!! Will Kelin get her back...
...and who the hell gives a damn. This is a one joke movie and the joke wasn't even funny in the first place. A man slept with his sister...hahahaa. Take that joke and replay it 100 times and you have this movie. Kids write it in the dust on his car, old people shout it out across the street, its a never ending barrage of the same lame gag. The movie is another in the long line which attempts to gross out and embarrass its audience into laughing. American Pie is a successful example of the genre, Say It Isn't So is a shining example of how it can go so very wrong. All the elements are indeed here, the painful sight gags, the embarrassment of the actors, the bad taste, making fun of the handicapped...you know the kind of thing, but those involved with the making of this fail to deliver the goods in any of the supposedly funny scenes.
Embarrassing the principal players is where the comedy comes from, but it should be the embarrassment of the dignified, the unsuspecting and those who deserve it - all the better if they have no clue that they are being embarrassed(hair gel incident in Mary for example). Klein's character is a clutz, a moron and a dufus who everyone picks on and who is resigned to sh*t happening to him every second of his life. Watching it happen minute after minute is not only boring, but also starts to leave you feeling sorry for his character which is a HUGE mistake because then it becomes painful rather than funny. This happens very early on. Take into account too that the writers and directors have little idea of how to milk a funny scene and things just get worse. Take a clip on the trailer for example. A hairdresser snipping an ear might be funny if handled correctly...a hairdresser snipping off the top of an ear with the camera in close up to see it in its full gory details and then it being reattached in a hospital operation is NOT funny. Its painful again and far from being a standalone incident this kind of off target 'comedy' reins throughout.
Its interesting, because the age range who may find this kind of thing funny is no doubt those who are supposedly banned fro mseeing it through the certification. I wouldn't hesitate to add that I think that even 15/16 would be too old to find many of these gags childish, perhas 9/10 would bea more suitable range but in no circumstances should children be allowed to see this movie. Its rare that I sit through a movie and find absolutely no redeeming features to it whatsoever but this is certainly one of those times. You can't even say that the acting is worth a light because even with some of Hollywood's more talented actors on screen its also pretty awful. I have never been much of a fan of Heather Graham, neither seeing her as being a raging beauty or a particularly talented actress, but this would have to be the worst performance I have seen from her so far. Her role in the movie seems to be to stick out her breasts and be bounced around from one scene to next with little impact on any of them. Chris Klein stinks as an actor, coming across as a strange hybrid of all Keanu Reeves' worst features, a stunned rabbit and a plank of wood. He wasn't great in American Pie, but he's really bad here, but given what he has to work with you can't heap too much criticism upon him. I will criticize Sally Field though who you would have thought would have been above this kind of puerile nonsense. Her recent directorial efforts were dreadful, this latest role is an equally poor choice and her performance is the acting equivalent of fingernails being dragged down a blaackboard. The only one who delivers any kind of respectible performance is Orlando Jones who as a legless pilot, is the brunt of several misjudged gags of the most obvious kind.
If incest, necrophillia and beastiality(and thats just for starters) sound like your idea of funny then you might find something funny here, if not then I would advise steering well clear. The movie doesn't really try to be funny in the traditional sense of offering gags, but instead opts for a barrage of perverse human behaviour and cruel bullying which wears very thin within the first five minutes and becomes bloody annoying after 10. There is a distinct lack of understanding what is funny or why displayed throughout and I wouldn't hesitate to say that this is by far the worst movie I have seen in the last 12 months...and there were a lot of turkeys last year!
Pure, unadulterated trash.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Comedy - Director: Gareth Carrivick - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Kathryn Drysdale, Sheridan Smith, Natalie Casey, Will Mellor, Ralf Little
Comedy - Director: Richard Boden, Mandie Fletcher, Martin Shardlow - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Brian Blessed, Tim McInnerny, Tony Robinson, Rowan Atkinson
Comedy - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Tessa Peake-Jones, Buster Merryfield, David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst
You wouldn`t recommend I go out of my way to see it then. :0)
eljimbob 23.02.2002 22:02
You don't mix your words do you, great op, language :¬) James
poet831 23.02.2002 20:38
Thanks for letting me know that I'd be wasting my time seeing this. I'm not really into comedies anyway but sometimes suffer them as hubby likes them. Will definitely give this one a miss. Good review. Rose:)
If there is one Hollywood team that you can always rely on to push back the boundaries of ... more
taste its the Farrelly brothers.Say It Isnt Sois only produced by the pair but owes more than a passing sniff to their brand of comedy of misfortune. Animal rescu...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
If there is one Hollywood team that you can always rely on to push back the boundaries of ... more
taste its the Farrelly brothers.Say It Isnt Sois only produced by the pair but owes more than a passing sniff to their brand of comedy of misfortune. Animal rescu...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy discovers she may be his sister. (Boy this could be ... more
trouble.) To make matters worse by the time he discovers "it isn't so" he has precious little time to stop the woman of his dreams from marrying another man. It'...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Advantages: Maybe younger teens would enjoy it - a girlie outing perhaps Disadvantages: The HUGE cringe factor involved. I spent much of my time silently begging the director to have resisted the next obvious pun...
JammyUK 11.07.2001 (11.07.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Say It Isn't So (DVD)
![Say It Isn't So [2001] [DVD]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78520629.jpg "Say It Isn't So [2001] [DVD]")
Feb 23rd, 2002
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