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Hush

Hush

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Campy Fun
Review: In the tradition of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" and "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," comes another guilty pleasure that is just pure B movie camp. It's a hell of a lot of fun too. The film's got problems (I hear it was originally close to 3 hours and a lot of footage was cut) and a commentary or some deleted scenes would have been a great addition to this disc. As it is, it's worth buying, but I would suggest renting it first, because it's not for all tastes.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Embarrassing for Lange
Review: Is this what a quality actress has come to? It is unfathomable that Lange would accept such a role. Where are the producers and directors who might supply a a script worthy of her talent. Boring film. How in in the world did the actor who portrays Lange's son get this part? Paltrow is Paltrow - the same in every role. Her powerful parents stole the oscar from Blanchet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Grate but not scary
Review: It is just a all around suspencful film you never know what is going to happen next. This is a must see movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sloppy editing mars well acted thriller
Review: Most critics hated "Hush" The public didn't seem very interested in it. At best, it's a film people might refer to as having its moments.

"Hush", I suspect, had some of the best of it left on the cutting room floor. The director, who also wrote the script, would know. If the script hadn't read well, nobody would have agreed to put the money up. Stars - in this case Jessica Lange and Gwenyth Paltrow - would not intentionally put their reputations on the line.

Jessica Lange always brings believability to her characters. Her psychotic episodes in "Hush" are frightening because she truly looks and sounds insane. Gwenyth Paltrow, as her new daughter-in-law, gets to use a good bit of her tremendous acting range. She can be cold and calculating as easily as she can be warm and innocent. The likable Johnathon Schaech portrays the son and husband well. Nina Foch, who has been in films since 1943 and who teaches acting at USC, is darkly amusing as the mother of Lange's dead husband.

It's too bad that the final version of "Hush" is weak. If you watch closely, you can see where key scenes have been deleted. Lange's spine tingling confessional in a Catholic church, indicates that the mother's religious fanaticism was the key plot element. A toy carousel seems to have had some meaning, but its relevance is never explained. There is a locket that plays a big part in the story. Suddenly it is missing, and it's never referred to again. The climax is very good, but the very end of the film seems merely tacked on. It just stops.

If Jonathan Darby, a young and not well know director, makes the big time, perhaps we will get to see the director's original version one day. It might seem like a different movie.

Indeed, "Hush" has its moments. It will prove fairly entertaining for those in the mood for a thriller that is a no brainer.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Silliness
Review: Over-the-top tripe is still kind of fun. Gwyneth starts sporting wigs about a third of the way in--she must have been working on another film at the same time, or been recalled to reshoot some of this silly film. Jonathan (sic?) Shaech has the most hilarious line: a whopping "SHADDUP!" right in the face of Jessica Lange. My girlfriend and I burst out laughing at inopportune times during this movie. I think the careers of Jessica and Gwyneth can survive this, but this may well have done in Mr. Shaech. Very campy but entertaining, nevertheless.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Better-than-average thriller in need of plot adjustment
Review: Overall, I'd wouldn't recommend this thriller to any serious thriller buff, but it helps with good performances by Paltrow and Schaetch.

HUSH has the makings of a good thriller-attractive cast, great scenery, but what it lacks is the plot that is so transparent that it's unintentionally hilarious. Attractive Gwyneth Paltrow and her hunkish beau (Jonathon Schaetch) visit his widowed mother (Jessica Lange) in Virginia for Christmas holiday. Unfortunately, Lange has different ideas instead of a happy holiday, and ensues in plot development that is predictable, ending in a sloppy mess. The movie passes by quickly for a mere 90 minutes, and it's easily forgettable.

HUSH benefits from the good performances set in by Paltrow and Schaetch, good cinematography, but the movie suffers from the surprisingly poor performance by the usually superior Jessica Lange, which is attributed to the poor script.

If the director Jonathan Darby had thought to write a more suspenseful, atmospheric script, the movie would have been more enjoyable. Instead, it's a campy thriller that benefits from better-than-average performances and it's light entertainment.

If you're a film buff fond of thrillers that have Gwyneth Paltrow in them, whatever the performance she delivers is good by your standards, by all means pick it up. If you're a thriller buff, skip this one.

Rated PG-13 for violence, brief nudity and brief strong language.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hush Hush Sweet Gwyneth
Review: Poor Jessica Lange. She must have needed money REALLY bad to do this warmed-over Southern-Fried gothic. But she looks as if she is having the time of her life doing it: she's equal parts Blanche DuBois, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Electra, with a little bit of Dorothy Malone on top. She runs around for the whole of the movie wolfing down whiskey and looking at Johnathon Schaech as if she'd like to take a bite out of him and at Gwyneth Paltrow as if she'd like to bite her too (not for the same reason, though). The wafer-thin plot has Jessica's Mommie Dearest plotting to keep 'ole Johnnie down on the farm and breed, then get rid of Paltrow. Since Schaech plays the biggest dunderhead in the Western hemisphere, and Gwynnie is, well, Gwynnie, nobody tumbles to the fact that Mommie is the baddie here 'till the last reel. Nobody except Nina Foch, the only bright spot in the movie as Jessica's Mother-in-law, laid up in a nursing home. (Jessica's two scenes with Nina really crackle) This despite the fact that for seemingly the last hour of the movie, mad Mommie is running all over the house trying to stick poor Gwynnie with a syringe full of opiates (anything to get her to stop whining!) As a matter of fact, Gwynnie is the only problem here, her wan, colorless portrayal of the in-danger daughter-in-law is so unbearably grating that you long for Jessica to hit her with a lamp. The only interesting part of her performance is when at the end, where she shows a side to her character that is a lot closer to Mommie than you would think. Ah well. The scenery is gorgeous, most of the principals are as well, and if you can just sort of sit back and enjoy it in a big-budget William Castle kind of way, you'll have a good time.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: And the oscar goes to the horse.
Review: Schaeck and Paltrow feature as a young NYC couple enduring the usual tribulations of a rabbit-hutch apartment and demanding careers. A visit to Mom's country ranch (the ludicrously titled 'Kilronan', an Irish-American cliche to match any 'Tara') finds them face to face with Lange, playing Schaeck's demented mother, a woman who manages to make Lady Macbeth seem positively homely. Jealous of her son's happiness and determined to wreck it, she subsequently enlists a local hayseed to terrify a now pregnant Paltrow in their New York apartment, almost costing the couple their child. Unable to make the connection between Lange and the attack, they then move back to the ranch on a permanent basis where we are sucked into a series of events so implausibly assembled that whats left of your mind will wander to the prospect of Hitchcock on mescaline. The final denouement, in which Paltrow is forced to give birth as Lange tearfully knits a booty at her bedside represents a nadir from which the genre is unlikely to recover. Hal Holbrook puts in an appearance as the local quack. Physician, heal thyself.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Could have been better, but still is good
Review: The plot is confusing and the action takes place too far in the movie. You're not very attracted by the scenario in the first thirty minutes, and if you don't get asleep there, you'll enjoy the end. I think a lot of elements are not needed and a lot of others are essential to insist on. They definitely could have done better with this film, but it is still a very good and genuine idea.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Stupendously awful fun!
Review: There hasn't been a bad movie that was this much fun since "Mommie Dearest", to which "Hush" bears more than a passing resemblance. Jessica Lange (in a campy Blanche DuBois-meets-Baby Jane performance that is not to be believed) plays the psycho mother from hell who slowly begins to terrorize her son's emotionally fragile wife. As the pretty young young thing in question, Gwyneth Paltrow gives her latest one-note performance, but at least here she's terrorized for a good 90 minuites as punishment. Oedipal overtones notwithstanding, the plot (such as it is) is full of holes you could drive a Haddad's truck through, and large portions of the story seem to have mysteriously disappeared. But if bad cinema is your guilty pleasure, you won't care; pick this up and prepare to howl yourself into oblivion.


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