Post by nipkowdisc on Dec 12, 2022 15:35:26 GMT
last nite watched Dear Brigitte on my dvd player and whoa! is it awful. possibly James Stewart's worst comedy and weakest film. a few years before this Henry Koster directed him in Mr. Hobbs takes a Vacation which was funny and stewart was sharp in that..but not here. Here he is an eccentric poet living with his brood in an old mississippi riverboat in the san francisco bay area who fears modern science and eventually it is discovered that his son erasmus is a human computer. then the film becomes excruciatingly annoying. the best scenes are erasmus showing up banks and computers. this is worth sitting through to see Brigitte Bardot's charming cameo performance at the end.
IMDb review:
Fussy, annoying family comedy; ersatz Disney without the car chase...
John Haase's novel "Erasmus With Freckles" gets a woebegone Hollywood makeover and, while it may look promising at the outset, it turns out to be one of the weakest films James Stewart ever starred in. Young Billy Mumy, a mathematical genius, spends all of his spare time writing juvenile love letters to French film actress Brigitte Bardot (though it isn't mentioned just how many of her pictures he has actually been allowed to see). Eventually, dad Stewart gets Mumy an audience with the siren (whose brief appearance is the only bright spot here). Movies about unconventional family broods have to include more than just hectic, noisy silliness to keep our attention; this adaptation doesn't even try for a sense of eccentricity in the content of character, nor does it expand on the central child's personality. It's meant to be heart-warming, non-threatening fun, yet it borders dangerously on bland, with nary a single funny scene. *1/2 from ****
IMDb review:
Fussy, annoying family comedy; ersatz Disney without the car chase...
John Haase's novel "Erasmus With Freckles" gets a woebegone Hollywood makeover and, while it may look promising at the outset, it turns out to be one of the weakest films James Stewart ever starred in. Young Billy Mumy, a mathematical genius, spends all of his spare time writing juvenile love letters to French film actress Brigitte Bardot (though it isn't mentioned just how many of her pictures he has actually been allowed to see). Eventually, dad Stewart gets Mumy an audience with the siren (whose brief appearance is the only bright spot here). Movies about unconventional family broods have to include more than just hectic, noisy silliness to keep our attention; this adaptation doesn't even try for a sense of eccentricity in the content of character, nor does it expand on the central child's personality. It's meant to be heart-warming, non-threatening fun, yet it borders dangerously on bland, with nary a single funny scene. *1/2 from ****
