Conference bookie::movies

    I saw it Sunday. I was ok. The story was slow. The dialog was weak. The
    acting was good.  No Nudity, a lot of blood, and not what I would call
    a happy ending.  ** out of 5.
                       Jeff Peters

    
    Capsule review:
    
    Young Guns undergoes sex reassignment.  Strictly mind candy.
    
    Slightly more in-depth:
    
    The basic problem with this story is that it depends on failures in
    characterization to move the plot along.  Madelaine Stowe is convincing
    as a tough woman, but in order to get her and her friends mixed up with
    the villians she has to be uncharacteristically passive long enough to
    be robbed.  Dermot Mulroney has the same problem.  Here's a man who
    obviously has got his act together, a passionate man who is not ruled
    by his passions, but when we need a plot complication all that
    self-control goes out the window.  It's too bad, because the script
    showed evidence of careful crafting in other places.  We manage to find
    out how all these women ended up as prostitutes without interrupting
    the flow of the story, for example, and they're all believeable
    stories.
    
    Only two performances stand out, and in this female dominated movie
    they're both by men.  James Russo, whose career has been so far limited
    to the sort of thing you see on Cinemax after 10:00, made for a
    sufficiently slimy and evil villian.  And Dermot Mulroney, except for
    the aberration above that is more the fault of the script, was really
    good as what you might call the sensitive tough guy.  Doubtless
    originally inserted as the token non-sexist male, he managed to bring
    that off without looking goofy in the context.  He's also got the
    movie's only funny line.
    
    About the best you can say for Andie McDowell and Mary Stuart Masterson
    is they looked their parts, as the wilted lily and fallen housewife
    variations of prostitutes.
    
    Drew Barrymore has got the best tarty pout in Hollywood.  At one point
    in the syrupy ending I thought her character was going to unveil some
    sort of major crush on Andie McDowell's, but I guess that wouldn't have
    fit the formula.
    
    If you're at all fussy about your movie choices, this is probably worth
    only a matinee.
    
    DFW

    I saw this movie last night and found it very boring.  Except that the
    four main characters are all female, it seemed like a boring rehash of
    various  other Westerns I've seen over the course of my life, mostly on
    TV in the '50's and '60's.  The pace was very slow.  I almost walked
    out a couple of times, but was curious to see how it all ended.  The
    characters weren't explored enough to make them seem really
    interesting.  It's really just a typical, boring, action Western, with
    4 good looking women as the main characters, instead of men.  Joyce
    Kulhawik (sp?) on Channel 4 in Boston, said that she got the same
    charge out of it that she got out of Thelma & Louise.  All I can say to
    that is that, if that is the case, then I don't think she got as much
    out of Thelma & Louise as was offered, because I don't think there's
    any comparison between the two.  In this movie the main characters were
    all just card board cutouts for me, whereas Thelma & Louise were real
    people.  
    
    Dermot Mulroney was good with what he had to work with.  What other
    movies has he been in?  There was an interview with him in a magazine a
    few months ago (either Interview or Details), and I thought he looked
    familiar then, too, but can't place him.  Is he a male model?
    
    Lorna
    

    Dermot Mulroney - an interesting actor!
    
    First thing I ever saw him in was one of the best baseball movies ever
    made, from a wonderful Paul Hemphill novel called Long Gone.  He was
    the young naive second baseman taken under the wing of the old pro
    William L. Petersen, the player manager Stud Cantrell.  Stud hooked up
    with a local beauty queen (Virginia Madsen) Miss Dixie Lee Boxx, and
    their relationship was unique and liberating for the south in the late
    50s.  There was a subplot with the owner and his son (Henry Gibson and
    the little guy from Penn and Teller), which tied in to another subplot
    about segregation.  It tied up nicely in the end.  Excellent baseball
    action, believable characters, great performances,  9 out of 10.
    
    Mulroney was also in Young Guns, Career Opportunities (as the bad guy
    to Frank Whaley and the gorgeous Jennifer Connolly), and Point of No
    Return (as Bridget Fonda's boyfriend),  
    
    NAZZ

    
    as lorna said, this is just a rehash of old-style westerns with
    four women in the lead roles. but it's done with such incredible
    style, panache and sense of fun that i *thoroughly* enjoyed it.
    
    i will be disappointed (though not surprised) if there's no 
    'bad girls ii'
    
    ***� (automatic � star deduction for no nudity)