In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
One example is below.
Q: plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what 's the deal ?
watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
critique : a mind - fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just did n't snag this one correctly
.
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it 's simply too jumbled
.
it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member ,
have no idea what 's going on
.
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally do n't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film 's biggest problem .
it 's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half - way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still did n't the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it .
. .
there are people chasing her and we do n't know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might 've been a pretty decent teen mind - fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character 's unraveling .
overall , the film does n't stick
because it does n't entertain , it 's confusing , it rarely excites and
it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh ,
and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . .
it 's just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . .
. skip it !
where 's joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 )
- lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
A: N
Rationale: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Q: i came to an epiphany while watching the bachelor , an innocuous - enough - on - the - surface romantic comedy .
it 's not the sort of film in which one would expect to achieve any moment of clarity , but there it was nonetheless .
i sat there watching this marshmallow of a movie unfold when suddenly i realized what is so ridiculously wrong with the entire romantic comedy genre circa 1999 .
in a word , it 's the same thing that 's wrong with so many movies circa 1999 : writing .
more to the point , it 's the refusal to acknowledge that characterizations matter when you 're telling a story about a relationship .
the bachelor is merely the latest in a long line of films where we 're expected to get dewy - eyed over any pairing of attractive , pleasant people just because they 're attractive and pleasant .
in this particular case , attractive and pleasant exhibit a is jimmy shannon ( chris o'donnell ) , a single guy who has been watching his friends slowly but surely sucked into marriage .
it 's a scary notion for jimmy , even though he dearly loves attractive and pleasant exhibit b anne ( renee zellweger ) , his girlfriend of three years .
convinced despite his reservations that it 's time to " sh
* t or get off the pot , " jimmy proposes to anne -- very badly .
anne refuses , which leaves jimmy in a very odd position when his eccentric grandfather ( peter ustinov ) dies and leaves a very specific video will .
jimmy stands to inhereit $ 100 million if he is married by 6
: 05 p .
m .
on his 30th birthday , stays married for 10 years and produces a child .
there are only a couple of minor problems : 1 ) jimmy 's 30th birthday is the next day ; 2 ) anne is nowhere to be found , meaning jimmy has to find another willing bride from among his many ex - girlfriends .
it 's a wacky , brewster 's millions - esque premise ( acknowledged as such in one of the film 's better , more self - aware lines of dialogue ) , the kind where a shallow and materialistic guy learns what really matters .
at least that would be the case if jimmy were n't already a world - class altruist .
screenwriter steve cohen slides into the story an even more draconian condition in the will : if jimmy does n't get married , not only will he lose all the money , but the family billiard table buisness will be sold out from under him , costing hudreds of jobs .
from the outset , jimmy 's motivation is n't cash ; it 's the livelihoods of his devoted employees .
it 's almost embarrassing for his marital misgivings to play a role in the bachelor 's plot development .
by any human standard , the guy is impossibly selfless .
and that 's the essence of the gutlessness endemic to films like the bachelor --
the fear of giving the characters flaws to overcome on their way to happiness .
there 's never any tension between the two star - crossed lovers , because there 's no sense that anything remotely significant is at stake .
the blandly nice o'donnell could n't pull off a randy cad if he tried , so the filmmakers do n't even let him ; zellweger 's anne may have issues with her sickeningly affectionate parents as an impossible standard to live up to , but no one dares make her anything but the woman ( lightly ) wronged . and forget about seeing enough of jimmy and anne together to feel invested in their potential reconciliation .
the parade of sit - com set pieces had better be damned funny , since they 're all that stands between us and a blissfully sweet foregone conclusion .
i 'll admit a couple of those set pieces are amusing , including ustinov 's rantings about procreation and a restaurant full - to - bursting with men popping questions and champagne corks .
far more of them are either tedious or downright ghastly
, like the shudder - inducing sight of brooke shields as an icy fortune - hunter or the hideous collection of stereotypes when hundreds of potential brides gather in a church .
you 're never going to get too many raucous belly laughs from a film like the bachelor , but that 's not the real problem .
nor is it the real problem that you know exactly the kind of warm - n - fuzzy conclusion it 's leading up to .
the problem are a beginning and middle that are equally warm - n - fuzzy --
there 's no spark , no energy , no humanity .
it 's an emotional pudding guaranteed not to offend any consumer 's digestions .
we 've reached a point where our proxies for cinematic romantic wish fulfillment do n't even have a pulse .
the bachelor is love among the mannequins .
A:
N