Rating: 
Summary: I won't say where the smoke is being blown...
Review: This film starts out so promising. It could have been a punchy dramatic piece about the nature of belief, and the legitimacy of the concept of free will. Instead, the characters dribble into infantile sexuality, and the film becomes a travelog. I can't believe this film found financing...a real waste of obvious talent. The effect of the ending is to trivialise the opening premise, hence the film winds up being an exercise in meaninglessness with an unpleasant aftertaste.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Performances now equal Goofy in Campions "odd" styles
Review: It's hard to deny that Jane Campion is an inventive director. But one could ask the question, "Has she gone too far?" with this one. Kate Winslet stars as Ruth, an Australian woman who gets caught up in the mysticism of a India guru. On a simple trip as tourist, she ends up making life-altering decisions and plans on wedding the guru, and living a life in the "cult". Her family, of course, do not want this to occur and will do anything, no matter the cost, to get her out. They turn to help in a deprogrammer named PJ, played by Harvey Keitel. Needless to say, they get Ruth home - she is violent at first, hurt, that her family can't see the freedom and beauty in her new spirtitual endeavor. Finally, she submits her mind and religion to the deprogrammer and he begins his oddysey to change her (for the better?). From the movies exclamation Holy Smoke! - we can tell that Campion is painting a rather odd comedy with a bit of drama and the usual Campion vignettes, female power and sexual power. Kate Winslet is a powerhouse as Ruth, and to add to her magnetic performance - she masters an Australian accent with the ease of Meryl Streep. But, it's hard to take her seriously. Why does she seduce the deprogrammer, to prove the power of reversal? It's interesting to watch the film switch roles between guru-influenced and deprogrammer. Harvey Keitel is sensational as PJ, the womanizing religion-stomper. He submits to Ruth's power, when he should be trying to overthrow her. The movie lacks the elegance and the intelligence of THE PIANO, but we can't expect Jane Campion to keep dishing out classics such as that. Here, I think she toyed with the idea of making a goofy comedy out of a serious subject. She works it well, but at times it feels pointless, drags on, and loses its fire. Winslet's Ruth becomes tiresome and Keitel's PJ just becomes ludicrous with the flow of the movie, and if anything watch the movie to see the acting of Keitel and Winslet, seeing them together is remiscent of the acting competition of Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel in THE PIANO. If she could have found a way to keep the fire going all the way to the end, instead of taking the easy way out and making it a goofy farce, the outcome would have been a lot more powerful and interesting instead of feeling like a waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Just too silly to be interesting
Review: Starring Kate Winslet as a young Australian woman whose family hires Harvey Keitel to "deprogram" her beliefs when she joins a cult in India, this video held the promise of an offbeat and interesting story.I sure was disappointed. The story was too contrived. And very very silly. Winslet's Australian family are just too much to be believed. Dysfunctional to the core, they are there to provide comic relief in this film which can't seem to decide if it's a comedy or a drama. There's also supposed to be romantic chemistry between the 61-year old Keitel and the 25-year old Winslet. But I couldn't help giggling in disbelief at their supposed passion. And we glimpse very little of the actual cult. Winslet is kidnapped by her family too soon to explore that important aspect of the film. All the centuries and variety of religion in India are never dealt with. Just because it is different, it is labeled "cult". The performances by Winslet and Keitel are good however. Both of them are accomplished actors and do their best with their roles. And the cinematography of the Australian outback is also done well. But, after all, the essence of a good film is the story which was much too talky as well as being silly. I found myself dozing off and wanting to "fast forward" it to the end. My recommendation: forget about it.
Rating: 
Summary: It is the good idea for a movie that goes up in smoke here
Review: "Holy Smoke!" did not turn out to be the movie I was given to expect based on the title and opening scenes, which was disappointing because I was rather interested in seeing the movie I thought I was going to see. Granted, since the director of this 1999 film is Jane Campion, I should have known what the conflict was going to be, but I am almost always thinking ahead when watching a movie and this time I saw a fork in the road where they was not one to be seen.
As we saw in "The Piano," Campion's heroines tend to be women who have to travel to some new place to find out who they really are. In "Holy Smoke!" this transformation has always taken place for Ruth Baron (Kate Winslet), who has found a spiritual awakening with a guru in India. Despite the fact that this is communicated to us by a collage of images of richly saturated colors while Neil Diamond sings "Holly Holy" it appears to be a meaningful transformation, even if the guru is not even a second rate holy man. But as far as her family back in Australia are concerned, Ruth has fallen in with a cult, and so her mother is dispatched to New Dehli to bring her daughter home with a false tale that her father is on his deathbed. Instead she finds a deprogammer, PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel), brought in from the States at some expense to bring her back to the fold.
I should have realized that Ruth's faith could not run deep, but the animosity of her family towards her new life and new beliefs is based on racism more than religion. Consequently I was anticipating that Ruth was going to have the better of Waters, and was expecting a debate that represented the clash between East and West. Instead, "Holy Smoke!" comes down to a battle of the sexes. Ruth and her deprogrammer are sequestered in a halfway house in the Outback where Waters plans to break Ruth in three days, and their initiate discussions strongly suggest that she can give as good as she gets. In fact, we never doubt that Ruth is smarter than Waters and her entire family put together. He lets her walk about outside and play with rocks, which turns out to be just one of many mistakes that he makes in underestimating her.
Then, suddenly, Ruth is standing there naked in the night and all discussions on the relative merits of competing belief systems is completely forgotten. I knew that Ruth was going to turn the tables on Waters, but I did not think it would debunking his machismo. Such a confrontation is certainly worth the having, but setting it up with the notion of deprogramming is just the wrong way to go. You can make a comedy about deprogramming, or you can have a serious film about it, but using it as nothing more than an excuse to put these two people in a shack in the Outback seems a waste.
Ironically, Ruth reveals herself to be such a strong personality that it seems odd she would give herself body and soul to anyone, let alone a guru in India. In contrast we have to believe that Waters' partner in the deprogramming (Pam Grier) must be the key to the operation because his arguments are rather insipid and his ability to withstand either Ruth or her sister-in-law (Sophie Lee) is nonexistent. He really does not present much of a challenge for Ruth, and the worst he looks the less impressive her achievement, and the less we think of this film. It is only Winslet's performance that redeems this film and makes it worth the watching, but then she was why I checked it out in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Truly an Ugly Movie
Review: I've sat through more than my fair share of pretentious films in my attempt to escape Hollywood's drivel. Based on the cast and the strength of the film maker, I thought Holy Smoke would have a good script, strong performances and something to say. Indeed, the film began with much promise, only to bogged down by what I would call an awful second and dreadful third act. How the characters get from point A to point F is beyond me and certainly not motivated by what was shown on the screen. If this movie was designed to question the roles of men and women in religious circles, question physical vs. mental domination in relationships, or question choices vs. others' perceptions of those choices, it would have been a worthwhile use of kodak film. In the end, the film suffers from too many ideas, too little cohesion and too much self-importance.
I would suggest avoiding this film, almost as much as I would avoid Gigli.
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