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The Talented Mr. Ripley

I'd fuck this icebox I love it so much.

A review by Mike Shea   Movie Rating: ( * * · · · )    DVD Rating: ( * * * * · )

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I like to classify movies. One of my little pleasures is to take movies and stick them into little baskets. What Lies Beneath is Three's Company, where our hero is switching glasses and changing rings so that group A won't realize that he is someone different to group B. Never EVER take a plot line from a 70s sitcom and try to make it legit. Even with the air of nobility and credence you get by having a homosexual as your main character and showing at least one Italian stone pillar in every shot, you lose it when you have our anti-hero setting up meetings with two dates at the same time. After the movie is said and done, you either walk away feeling like you are an elite member of society for not caring that the main character is gay, or else you go home and turn on WWF. But to take a deeper look at this movie is to realize that under all the elitist plot points there is nothing but Jack Tripper putting on a fake mustache and using a spanish accent with one girl while hoping the other doesn't realize that his shirt is different than when he started. Of course, in all those shows, Jack always gets caught. At least in this movie, every time the hero does get caught, he smashes their head apart with a Roman statue. The DVD has a lot going for it. There is an excellent Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that really shines in track 5, the jazz club. That is how Dolby Digital should be used. The picture was a nice sharp 16x9 enhanced 1.85 to 1 matte. There is a making of feature, but no commentary. Overall, I can't say the movie was a complete waste of time, but it certainly wasn't anything other than a silly 24 minute sitcom spread out with murder.