WHAT I ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THE MOVIE:
1) It stars Elizabeth Taylor.
2) It's about a dinner party with a bickering married couple.
LET ME EXPLAIN...
This film started out with so much promise. It reminded me of Meet the Parents and The Dinner Party episode from The Office because it was so uncomfortably awkward while simultaneously REALLY funny. The lines were witty, and the young couple that comes over for a drink were great as the proper and polite audience trying their best not to show how uncomfortable they are.
Unfortunately, once the scene changes to the swing outside, the entire movie collapses to me. The comedy evaporates, and the story gets weird, serious, and hard to understand. When the movie ended, I had just about as many questions as I did after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What makes this a "Top 100" Movie?
I'm struggling to come up with an answer to this. Sure, it was well acted (Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for her role, and Richard Burton was nominated), but not to the point that it becomes the 67th greatest film of all time. The plot, while being a sad examination of what I'm sure some marriages are really like, didn't seem all that gripping or significant to me. It was just sad, but the script got really confusing as the movie progressed. Of course, this was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning 5 of them, so for some reason it's considered an amazing film. (Think about that for a moment. This movie was nominated for 13 Oscars. That's a ton for one film. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring had the same number of nominations in 2001. Titanic, which shattered box office records in 1997, only had one more nomination than that.)
Complaints
Everything after the initial scene with the four main characters. Once that scene ends, the movie gets confusing, weird, and not very enjoyable.
LET ME SUM UP...
I'd recommend watching the first part of this film. It's funny with great wit and some classic awkward moments. Once you see Richard Burton sitting in the tree swing in the front yard, you can turn it off.
MY RATING: 2/10
TOTAL # OF FILMS WATCHED: 75
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