Strongly disagree. Episode 2 is the absolute nadir of the whole franchise. The story makes no sense, it completely ruined whatever lingering hopes there might have been that we were going to get an interesting backstory to the original trilogy.
I’d agree episode 3 is a little bit better. But that’s not saying much, IMO it was just good enough to show what could have been, the prequels could have been amazing. One of the main problems with it was the fact the other two movies had done such a terrible job of telling the overall story arc, it was left to basically one act of movie to cover the whole “Anakin becomes evil” plotline which should have been the subtext of the entire trilogy.
All this is a sidetrack to the OP though, IMO. As there is no one scene, even the midichodrians scene, or any of Jar-Jar Binks scenes, that ruins it.
I’m no one to defend the prequels, but doesn’t Anakin begin his turn to the dark side in the second film when he wipes out a whole village of Sand People?
Yeah but it’s so badly written and out of place with the rest of the plot the film that scene feels like a non-sequiture, rather than a step on the journey from Anakin to Vader.
If episode 1 simply had made Jar Jar and the Gungans less silly it could have been a decent movie. Lucas wanted to appeal to children. Unfortunately, with Jar Jar, he was trying to appeal to 6 year old’s. If he had aimed for the 12 year old’s the humor could have been acceptable to the original trilogy fans.
I like episodes 2&3. They’re fun movies with an OK story, cool looking aliens, and good action. That’s all I really need from Star Wars movies.
Irma La Douce is pretty fun, as it re-establishes the chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine from The Apartment. The sets depicting seamy Pigalle back streets are also cool.
But towards the last third of the film, when Nestor dresses up as an English lord to fake out Irma, it gets painfully stupid. Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of the lord is cartoonishly over the top and makes his Professor Fate character look refined and restrained.
I’ll watch the movie up until the stupid English lord nonsense starts and then I have to turn it off.
Le Cercle Rouge is a taut and gripping thriller - but the scene where Jansen hallucinates lizards and spiders crawling into his room feels weirdly out of place, like it was spliced in from some kind of creepy psychodrama.
Similarly, the end of Trading Places, when they’re all on the train trying to steal the briefcase with the frozen concentrated orange juice futures report in it, and their plan for some reason involves everyone dressing as ethnic stereotypes, including Dan Aykroyd in blackface. Even worse: they establish that the train they’re on is throwing a New Year’s Eve costume party, but they’re not disguising themselves as party-goers, they’re actually supposed to be the ethnicities they’re dressed as. Dan Aykroyd isn’t disguised as “White guy in a racist costume,” he’s disguised as a Black Jamaican. They expect the villain to look at Dan Aykroyd, covered in shoe polish, and think, “This is clearly a Caribbean gentleman of African descent.”
The entire “costume party” subplot has no actual relevance to their heist, it’s literally just there to facilitate a joke about gorilla rape.
And then the next scene is the finale on the floor of the stock market, and it’s one of the most satisfying (and entirely non-violent!) villain comeuppance scenes ever filmed.
Even worse: Beeks will certainly die because he’s in a gorilla suit with his mouth taped up (and hands tied, IIRC?). If the gorilla doesn’t kill him outright, he’ll die of thirst. Kind of a bringdown for a comedy!
It did? Lemme check IMDB. Yep, she’s in there - I’ll have to look next time. Hey, IMDB says she was in Some Like It Hot. I bet she was one of the band members.