When a happily married family man, who would never consider an affair, meets a beautiful woman in red, he is totally infatuated and desperate to make her acquaintance. However, as he tries out various schemes to sneak out to meet her, he realizes that adultery is not quite as easy as it looks.
16 Feb The Woman in Red (1984)
Different Favorite Color
Some movies are good, most not. Of the ones that are not, they still can be fun. This project made money when it was new, but is now not only unengaging but repulsive. Why is actually engaging, because it just cannot be explained by fading fashions.
There is plenty of that: smoking, TWA, pretty airline ‘stewardesses,‘ gay jokes, the implication that an ‘airline pilot‘ is both a status job and that they are tough. A gun joke. Below that is a notion of sexuality, manhood and marriage that is at least unfashionable, and noticeably as bankrupt as the currently marketed ones.
It had all the attention that a success needs: two then popular movie comics, production values, songs by two of the then biggest pop stars… a script that was already proved as a success in France and (brief) full frontal nudity. So why did this age so poorly? I think it is because it was not good in the first place and viewers did not notice. Contrast this with ‘The Hangover,‘ which banks on equally inept but currently fashionable notions in those areas. It is, however, completely novel, well constructed and essentially cinematic. This has none of those things to fall back on.
Posted in 2011
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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