Posted 10:59 AM by Chris

Miss J of TNMC.org shares a look at "One Love" in the most recent edition of "The Untitled Deadpool Column." As she writes there, the film is "a hip hoperatic spin-off of West Side Story...it certainly delivers on that musical likeness. The premise of both stories are very similar, and I'd even go so far as to say that West Side Story served as a template for the screenplay at hand. Even still, One Love lacks the levity and fun that seems to make most musicals so acceptable. Instead, it takes a grittier approach with the mood of the script, thereby making it hard to ingest the more unbelievable parts of the story. Not to mention, the neo urban-Shakespearean lines being rapped, literally, come across as more ridiculous than romantic."

Languishing in development hell for three years, she goes on to plead that the studio to rework the script. As she says, "! It has serious potential and could even open the doors to a whole new type of musical. But right now, just...no." Sounds good to me, although Rita Moreno has to be pretty pissed at this attempt.

Posted 6:37 PM by Chris

Jean-Francois Allaire of TNMC.org has had contributed a script review for the straight-to-video release "Bring it On Again" (the sequel to the 2000 cheerleading film) by a reader named "Verbal." And this talker's not at all enthused about the results, and he even enjoyed the original.

To wit: "There are some major problems with this script. There is little characterization to be found. All that can be said about Whittier is she's a young, blonde cheerleader who 'must' be on the team. Why does she love cheerleading so much? How does dancing make her feel? Why is she willing to risk serious physical strain to simply be a cheerleader? I don't have a clue what the answers to those questions are because I don't know anything about Whittier that I didn't learn from the brief description written on page 1. All that can really be said about Monica is she's young, good looking, loves to dance, and won't take being told to do something in a forceful manner. Doesn't that describe a lot of people? To make matters worse, clichés are in abundance."

Going on to say that the film has experienced some rewrites prior to his version and it could be a winner in the STV venue. But, all in all, not something for Universal to cheer about.

Click the link above to be transported to the script review.

Posted 6:20 PM by Chris

Ah, this feels odd. After critiquing some other script reviewers' work, I find myself in the unenviable position of adding my first script review in a month here to the blog. Over at FilmJerk.com, we've got the first look at "Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead," starring Dermot Mulroney, James Gandolfini and James Cromwell. Although I wrote a positive review, I think this one will languish in the marketplace.

Here's the negative: "While I like the story of a perfect crime that goes astray as a whole, the sum of the script’s parts does leave some to be desired. While I like the build-up in the first act, it moves extremely slowly—after the botched burglary that opens the film, the script meanders off and doesn’t re-ignite until the twist and Charles’ storyline begins. There’s also a great deal of extraneous characters that add nothing to the end story and ultimately serve to only bulk down the story’s pace, including Andy’s gratingly-religious sister and his wife’s sudden sidetrip into shoplifting. There are also a number of repeated scenes told from different characters’ points of view that add little if anything in their second use."

Then I follow it up a couple of pragraphs later with: "It’s a good twist on the genre of “the heist gone awry” and one of the independent pictures I’ll be waiting in line for opening weekend. I’m looking forward to Cromwell, Gandolfini and Mulroney eating the scenery here."

Soooo...read and judge by click the link above to be transported to the script review. Still feels so odd to quote myself. :)