In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
--------
Question: long ago , films were constructed of strong dialogue , original characters , memorable plot points , and solid acting .
one of the best examples that hollywood now completely ignore these qualities is found in the new film where the heart is .
this opus about the power of love and the redemption of family follows the tragic , and i mean tragic , life of novalee nation ( natalie portman ) .
hitting the road with her hick , guitar - playing boyfriend in a rusted - out gm , novalee dreams of the blue skies of bakersfield and sipping chocolate milk beneath a plastic umbrella with her unborn baby , due in a month .
stopping off at a nearby wal - mart for a quick rest , novalee 's boyfriend decides to take off and leaves her there .
novalee then decides to secretly hole up in the wal - mart ( because she 's not the brightest bulb in the stagelights ) .
a wacky librarian ( keith david ) comes to her rescue when she goes into labor one night while she is camped in the outdoors section of the store .
then the she moves in with a family , befriends everyone in town -- including ashley judd 's character ( who has five kids and still can work part - time as a nurse )
-- fights off religious freaks , survives a tornado , breaks the heart of the wacky librarian that saved her , receives an inheritance , builds a martha stewart - esque house , becomes an award - winning photographer , and manages to always look like she stepped out of a cosmo shoot , all while not once doing anything with her kid .
this film is terrible .
the directing is awful : it seems director matt williams had an index card with six angles written on it and used every one of them , over and over and over again .
we get pathetic and ugly acting by natalie portman , who can do good work .
a disjointed pacing of key scenes and a time structure so confusing that it would throw steve prefontaine off .
a subplot that actually validates the actions of the boyfriend who abandoned novalee in the wal - mart parking lot .
an embarrassing display of emotions by the characters , making the audience ill .
taking two great comedic screenwriters , babaloo mandel and lowell ganz , and forcing them to write drama on par with oprah 's book club .
altogether , it has the feeling of being trapped at home , watching a very bad television mini - series and wishing it to end , only the remote is broken .
however , the main problem with the film is that it never answers the most poignant question brought up : where is the heart ?
no one ever seems to find it in this piece of junk .

Answer: N


Question: dear god , this is a fantastically bad film !
regardless of what i say about knock off , you ca n't grasp its awfulness from my words .
you have to see it and experience it for yourself .
here 's the kicker , though -- i suggest that you do so .
yes , this is a bad film -- easily one of the most incompetent films of the year --
but it has a certain misguided charm that makes it a unique kind of disaster to endure
.
in fact , i enjoyed myself for most of its brief running time , despite the dreadful acting and a completely incomprehensible story
.
do n't get me wrong : i 'm not excusing knock off .
it reaches an unacceptable level of badness ; it 's so incoherent that i wonder if it was hacked up worse than the avengers was .
it also features some truly terrible performances from lela rochon , michael wong , paul sorvino , and -- of course -- jean - claude van damme .
it does , however , have the entertaining presence of rob schneider , and the excessively inventive and pretentious direction of tsui hark .
as i watched it , i occasionally wondered if it was aware of its own awfulness .
now , in retrospect , it seems clear that it was n't , but it 's still a fascinating kind of mess .
i do n't like writing plot descriptions ( it is , by far , the most boring part of writing a review ) , but , in this case , i 'm off the hook : there is no way i could write an accurate synopsis for knock off .
for the sake of comparison , i had no trouble understanding the usual suspects during my first viewing .
i paid closer attention to knock off , and the only thing i am able to say about it is that van damme plays a dude named ray , and is accused by the cia ( i think ) of selling
knock off products ( knock off products are , of course , products that look like name - brand materials but are generic and cheap ) .
i do n't know what any of this has to do with martial arts , but there are lots of martial arts in the film .
ray is good at martial arts , so when he has to beat up bad guys , there 's no problem .
rob schneider plays his sidekick , although i had no idea who he really was by the end of the film .
lela rochon is just some woman who accuses them of stuff , while paul sorvino is both the good guy and the bad guy at once !
in fact , every character goes through so many shifts from good to bad that the end provides absolutely no insight into what any of them really do .
in that order , knock off is completely incoherent and makes absolutely no sense .
but what a strange mess
it is .
it was written by stephen e .
de souza , who also wrote die hard and 48 hours .
can this be the same man ?
i do n't see how , unless , of course , huge chunks of the film have been removed for the sake of running time .
knock off seems to have an interesting premise ( as far as action films go ) , but there 's no semblance here .
for instance , van damme is introduced , and then seconds later he 's running a chariot race through the streets of hong kong .
why ?
who knows .
what are the implications of this ?
i have no idea .
most action films abandon depth in favor of action , and this is normally a problem .
knock off , however , is the first film that i would have preferred to see with all of the talky sequences cut .
the acting is embarrassingly bad :
rochon , in particular , delivers each of her lines with stiff and talentless insincerity .
sorvino , in addition , deserves better than this .
van damme is bad , but he 's charming in that bad way , and so i ca n't say that he 's hard to watch ( although i rarely understood what he was saying ) .
the only exception is rob schneider , who is actually quite funny a lot of the time .
tsui utilizes so many tricks that he makes john woo look tame by comparison .
they 're all pointless gimmicks
though , such as shots of the inner - workings of a knock off running shoe .
but his action scenes are never boring :
one particular piece inside of a fruit factory ( a fruit factory ? ) is well - choreographed .
lots of the scenes are pitched well to comedy , such as our heroes ' first encounter with the rochon character .
but did tsui know that his film is beyond ludicrous
?
i hope he did , for the alternative is a frightening thought .
knock off has the feel of a truly terrible exercise in camp mania .
if it were boring , i 'd give it zero stars .
but it 's not boring :
it 's loud and excessive and completely incoherent .
it 's also funny , even when it is n't meaning to be funny .
a bad film that succeeds as entertainment does n't deserve to be fully lambasted .
i recognize knock off for its irrefutable badness , but i ca n't deny it 's zany , useless charm .
oh , i know , they 're just action scenes looking desperately for a real story , but they 're fun action scenes amongst a crowd of laughably inane concepts .
it 's fun to admire
the awfulness of a film like this , but that does n't excuse the fact that it is , indeed , awful .

Answer: N


Question: the relaxed dude rides a roller coaster the big lebowski a film review by michael redman copyright 1998 by michael redman the most surreal situations are ordinary everyday life as viewed by an outsider .
when those observers are joel and ethan coen , the surreal becomes bizarre .
when the life is that of jeff " the dude " leboswki , the bizarre falls over the edge into the world of " what'sgoingonaroundhere " .
the marvelous sound of " the stranger " ( sam elliot ) 's
voice - over introduces the film .
at least it does until he forgets what he was going to say and gives up .
the dude ( jeff bridges ) is described as the " laziest man in los angeles , possibly the world " , although he 's not so much slothful as he is relaxed .
spending the last 30 years with a roach clip in one hand and a white russian in the other , he does n't have much of a life , but he 's having a good time .
when asked what he does for fun , he responds " bowl , drive around and the occasional acid flashback " .
lebowski 's passion is bowling .
when he 's not rolling the ball down an alley towards a strike , things just happen to him .
arriving home one night , he 's beaten by thugs attempting to collect money that his wife owes them .
even worse , they urinate on his rug .
the problem is that the dude does n't have a wife .
his assailants realize that their target is a different lebowski when they glance around at his apartment .
the " big " lebowski ( david huddleston ) is a multi - millionaire and his dudeness lives in two - room squalor .
the next day , our ragtag hero visits his namesake 's mansion attempting compensation for his soaked rug .
the carpet is important to him because it pulls the room together : not surprisingly since it 's virtually the only object there .
when he 's denied any money , he picks up a replacement rug off the floor .
on his way out , he runs into lebowski 's trophy
babe wife bunny
( tara reid ) who offers to perform a sexual act that , according to rumor , is one of bill clinton 's favorites for a thousand bucks .
the penniless dude wisecracks that he 's heading for the cash machine .
later he gets an unexpected phone call enlisting his aid in being the bag man to deliver a ransom to bunny 's kidnappers .
this begins the trademarked coen brothers crimes - gone - wrong sequences .
the kidnappers are impossibly inept .
the dude and his cronies are even worse .
every plan goes awry .
you can almost see lebowski 's brain churning in slow motion as he tries to figure out the clues .
that 's the story , but to tell the truth it does n't much matter .
there could be almost any plot and the film would be just as entertaining .
the narrative only exists so we can watch the offbeat characters and the quirky predicaments they fall into .
the dude 's bowling buddies walter ( john goodman ) and donny ( steve buscemi ) look like people you 'd see on the street but , like everything else in this film , they 're not quite what they seem .
walter is a vet as stuck in vietnam as the dude is in the sixties .
everything that happens reminds him of a situation in the nam .
when a fellow bowler crosses the foul line but wo n't admit it , walter pulls a gun on him until he marks a zero on the score sheet .
donny gets precious few words in between walter 's screaming and the dude 's rambling .
when he does , walter shouts him down with horrendous albeit seemingly unintentional bowling puns .
donny is " out of his league " and does n't " have a frame of reference " .
the film is peppered with people for whom the term " character " would be an understatement .
the big lebowski 's daughter maude , an avant - garde " vaginal " artist , paints while swinging naked in a leather apparatus like an s&m mary martin .
the kidnappers are german techno nihilist bikers .
bunny lebowski is a high school cheerleader turned porno star .
most impressive is john turturro in his far too small role as a hispanic bowler .
as the flamenco music swells , we see him putting on his lavender hose .
the camera pans up to an all - purple skin - tight bowling outfit with " jesus " ( pronounced with a " j " , not an " h " ) embroidered on the pocket .
he addresses the lane with intense seriousness and one painted fingernail .
his tongue slowly snakes out and lovingly licks the glowing bowling ball .
bridges works the dude as if he had been living him for decades and maybe he has .
i ca n't think of anyone else who could have done a better job .
buscemi has a limited role , but he plays it perfectly .
the more that i see john goodman the more convinced i am that he 's one of the treasures of our time .
it 's odd to think that most of the world knows him only as roseanne barr 's television husband .
more like the coen 's " raising arizona " than their hit " fargo " , " the big lebowski " demands an open mind and even more open eyes .
a mark of the coen brothers is that even with all wonderful dream sequences and the broad slapstick physical comedy on the screen , much of the humor is subtle and easy to miss .
there 's so much going on that
frequently it disappears before you can see it . walking out of the theater
, i felt that the film had something important to say .
on further examination , i was n't sure exactly what it was .
"
if you meet jesus at the bowling alley , it 's not going to be what you expect " ?
"
when the going gets weird , the weird go bowling " ?
maybe there 's no real message .
perhaps it 's just a roller coaster ride through a hilarious world .
maybe that 's enough .
( michael redman has written this column for 23 years and just realized that he was so taken with the dude that he ran out of space to talk about " the man in the iron mask " starring that favorite of 14-year - old girls of all ages .
redman@bvoice .
com is the eaddress for estuff . )

Answer:
P


