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Rough Magic

Rough Magic

List Price: $9.95
Your Price: $9.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This magic's not rough, it's jolly!
Review: It is very hard to predict where this strange but delightful movie will take you as the story goes on. The overall story of "Rough Magic" might be boring to those who does not take pleasure in seeing Jane Fonda and Russell Crowe, but the story is full of little fairy scenes that will leave you feel so romantic and delightful. Very unique!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A strange little movie, but give it a chance
Review: It's the story about a magician's assistant, played by Fonda, who flees from her rich fiance after he apparently kills her mentor. Disappearing in Mexico, she hooks up with a quack medicine show salesman who convinces her to help him find a legendary magical formula only the ancient native people know how to make. Mix in a down on his luck reporter (Crowe) who's really working for Fonda's ex-beau, but finds himself falling for the woman he's trailing. The ending kind of wimps out, but I enjoyed the banter between Fonda and Crowe. Don't take this film seriously, but enjoy it for the romance if nothing else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not Your Usual Movie
Review: Not your usual movie - and the acting talents of Bridget Fonda and Russel Crowe contribute quite a bit to the unusual characters they play. She can turn someone into a pig and he is a private investigator that gets caught up in her magic. Of course Russel has his charm and charisma that works her over throughout the movie. He's arrogant and determined, but also warm and devoted. Bridget plays a woman in control - but doesn't realize she needs all the help she can get. She's an adorable mate for Russel's character.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: let your mind go and your body will follow
Review: Okay, that's a quote from LA Story, but the sentiment applies to this little flickeroonie. Can you say magical realism? Think Cloud Tectonics, if you've been lucky enough to see that play. Bottom line: this is a great movie for those of us whose broken hearts seem fixed, and yet who hope . . . .

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Semper silly
Review: The first half of this film, set in LA and Mexico in the late 40's, is a fun noir knock-off, complete with hard-boiled dialogue and a wonderfully flashy yellow convertible. The premise is that Fonda is a comely assistant in a cheap nightclub magic act and Crowe is a Marine combat photographer (the only reason I rented it, natch) who went off the rails after having to document the Nagasaki survivors. He's now a drunken newspaper stringer in Mexico, and that's where Fonda goes on the lam after she sees her rich fiance commit a murder. Crowe is hired by said rotten fiance to find her, and winds up falling for her instead. Fonda is whiny rather than sultry (think "Murder, My Sweet" meets "Clueless") and Crowe's American accent slips occasionally, but it's not bad.

The second half appears to have come from an entirely different movie with the same cast and locale. Fonda and Crowe meet up with an ancient shaman-ess who teaches Fonda her art, her rich fiance catches up with her, and the movie collapses under leaden direction and an incomprehensible script. It tries--very hard--to be fey and magical but becomes merely weird. Even the sight of Crowe in Marine dress blues doesn't save it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best of the Best
Review: When Bridget is in a movie, who can pay attention to anything else? In this film, she again shows the great range and immense talent she has as the creation's finest actress and the nicest, kindest, sweetest, toughest, smartest, most loving, most faithful and most capable lady of all time.


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