Oh How I do love to review a Joel Schumacher movie. I can honestly say I have only ever enjoyed or even appreciated one of his movies Falling Down and that probably had a huge amount to do with Michael Douglas, not Joel Schumacher. Maybe one day the suits with the money to greenlight movies will wise up to his utter awfulness as a director and stop giving him money, but until that day he continues to churn them out at quite a rate, just how many movies is that since his nadir Batman & Robin ? Which was possibly one of the most goddawful movies ever. Looked it up and already he's three movies past that and another three on the way.

Suppose I'd better mention this latest movie of his and turn this piece into a review instead of a rant (hold on, most of my stuff is a rant, ah well). Flawless stars Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Flawless like so many Hollywood movie probably got made because it had a Unique Selling Point. Now why this is so necessary I have no idea, but hey it keeps the producers happy. And the unique selling point is that it is a buddy movie. Yaaawwwn you say, but this one has a twist, one of them is a drag queen and the other is a stroke victim. Ok, that's that barrel scraped again. Weird.

The gist of the story is that stroke victim Walt Koontz (no punning that name at the back please) who is played by Robert De Niro (going steadily dumper wise) looses the ability to speak and goes for singing lessons at his next door neighbour, the drag queen, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. And to spice the story up a bit some drug dealers come a looking for the drag queen with a bit of bother.

Robert De Niro who could once have been described as an amazing actor who HAD to be watched , and now could only be described as watchable is nothing more than a pile of cliches here full of tic's and movements to try and recreate the sense of being a stroke victim whereas once it would have been totally compelling instead comes across as more clumsy and painfully overacted. A good way is to describe it as imagining Britney Spears signing Opera. Painful.

Back to Joel Schumacher who shoudl really have tried so much harder to wring a winning performance out of De Niro instead never gets a hold of what tone and feel the movie should have. Is it a comedy? Is is a farce? Is it serious?

I don't think anyone involved actually knew.

Tall Guy