Review: Gloria (1999)
Susan Granger
Susan Granger's review of "GLORIA" (Columbia Pictures)
Following Gus Van Sant's pointless remake of Alfred Hitchcock's
"Psycho" is Sidney Lumet's remake of John Cassavetes' "Gloria." Back
in 1980, Cassavetes wrote and directed this story of a neighbor-woman
and the little kid she shelters, fashioning it specifically for the
talents of his wife Gena Rowlands, who received a Best Actress Oscar
nomination. While the story essentially remains the same - except that
a notebook has been changed to a computer disc - this current version
is disappointing, primarily because of miscasting. Sharon Stone plays
a gangster's girl-friend, just released from a Florida jail and headed
back to New York, where a mob accountant named Nunez and his family
are wiped out as thugs look for his "records" which have disappeared
into the hands of his seven year-old son (Jean-Luke Figueroa). Stone
duly rescues the cute kid and is determined to protect him. But what
worked for Gena Rowlands doesn't work for Sharon Stone. You cared
about Rowlands' character. She had a gruff vulnerability, an edginess,
and her affection for the orphan was touching. Sharon Stone's too
sassy and slick, slathering on a New York accent like thick
butter-creme frosting, and there's something about her maternal
instinct that doesn't ring as true as her "Basic Instinct." Steven
Antin's banal script is by-the-numbers with formulaic lines like
"You're driving me crazy, kid," and Sidney Lumet's direction lacks the
energy and momentum of his previous films like "Serpico," "Dog Day
Afternoon" and "12 Angry Men." Only Jeremy Northam, as an Irish
gangster, and George C. Scott, as a mob boss, deliver memorable
performances. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Gloria" is
flimsy 4. You'd do better renting the original "Gloria," available on
Columbia TriStar Home Video.
Steve Rhodes
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Some talented actresses are blessed with a demonstrated wide acting
range while others, almost as gifted, have more limited types of parts
for which they are suitable. As was amply evident after BASIC INSTINCT,
Sharon Stone can play sensual roles with great abandon. Rejecting her
natural abilities, she has spent the rest of her entire career trying
with little success to play against type. GLORIA is her latest
disaster.
Babe Ruth didn't quit baseball after one season to play football in a
quixotic quest to prove his athletic dexterity, and neither should Stone
reject what she does best. Janeane Garofalo, for example, is no less
wonderful an actress because she could have never pulled off Stone's
part in BASIC INSTINCT; neither is Stone any less talented because she
couldn't do Garofalo's comedic roles.
Gloria, directed by respected director Sidney Lumet and adapted by Steve
Antin from the 1980 screenplay by John Cassavetes, was not screened in
advance for critics, almost always a sign that the studio isn't behind
the picture. After seeing it in a nearly empty audience after it
opened, it is clear why they held it from the press. It is a film more
to be endured than enjoyed.
As the story opens, an angry Gloria (Stone) is being released from
prison after 3 years confinement. She's got a bad attitude and a big
mouth. She also has a bad case of wavering and overblown New York
accents, a disease suffered by much of the rest of the cast.
An annoying child actor named Jean-Luke Figueroa plays a soon-to-be
orphan named Nicky. Just before his whole family is gunned down by
hoods working for Gloria's ex-boyfriend Kevin (Jeremy Northam), Nicky's
dad gives him a banana yellow floppy disk with secrets about Kevin's
operation and offers him a piece of fatherly advice. "Be a man," his
father lectures him sternly. "Don't trust nobody. Not no broads.
Nobody."
Most of the film's leaden dialog is delivered with the emotive power of
the automated time and temperature announcements. Add in the movie's
almost non-existent background noise and the excruciatingly slow pacing,
and you can hear the sounds of the lines falling to the ground like
stones.
Lumet places his actors in the frames like fruit in a still life
painting. They stand awkwardly mouthing the stiff sentences that pass
for discourse. ("Say you're my baby," Kevin coos demandingly. "I'm not
gonna," Gloria pouts back.)
The movie has a plethora of logical flaws and implausibilites. The kid
rarely seems the least bit worried or scared, no matter how many people
are after him with guns, trying to kill him. And in one key scene, the
yellow floppy he holds is assumed to be the right disk without checking
it and is further assumed never to have been copied.
Gloria, who keeps saying how she hates kids, takes Nicky under her wing
and protects him from Kevin and the bad guys. Think her maternal
instincts will show up before the movie finally and predictably ends?
If you don't know the answer, you may be just the right viewer for this
film.
You have to say this for Stone: she can keep a straight face. When
explaining life to a 7-year-old kid, she says with utter seriousness,
"You got a lot of love making to make; you got a lot of boozing to do."
GLORIA runs 1:48. It is rated R for profanity, violence and brief male
nudity and would be acceptable for teenagers.
Email: Steve....@InternetReviews.com
Web: www.InternetReviews.com
James Sanford
Rated (R)
By James Sanford
The Kalamazoo Gazette
Roger Ebert has often brought up the idea that instead of rehashing
the classics, filmmakers should concentrate on revising movies that
weren't very good to begin with. Hollywood may have taken his comments
to heart.
Director Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" is a loose remake of
the unsuccessful 1964 film of the same name, and now director Sidney
Lumet has tackled "Gloria," based on a 1980 melodrama that was nothing
to shout about, but did feature a memorably flinty, Oscar-nominated
performance by Gena Rowlands.
And what are the results of these experiments? Malick's epic is
flawed but intermittently fascinating, rife with luscious
imagery. "Gloria," on the other hand, finds Sharon Stone doing her
darnedest to squeeze into Rowlands' high heels, and it doesn't take
long to see they don't become her.
Rowlands' Gloria was a bitter ex-gangster's moll whose heart had long
ago gone into a deep-freeze. Stone's Gloria, aside from the occasional
flip remark or crude comment, turns out to be a soft-shell crab. For a
woman who's supposedly so street-seasoned, she's weirdly skittish and
sentimental.
The reason for her transformation from bad mutha to mother figure is
Nicky Nunez (Jean-Luke Figueroa), a 7-year-old whose family was been
massacred by the henchmen of Gloria's ex-boyfriend Kevin (Jeremy
Northam), minutes after Nicky's dad sent the kid off with a valuable
computer disk and a teary "you da man." For reasons never made clear,
the supposedly steely Gloria steals Nicky from Kevin's clutches and
gives him a tour of New York, all the while dodging the bad guys who
want that precious disk.
Unable to commit to being a thriller or a character study, the movie
settles for being an excitement-free drag. Lumet, whose talent peaked
25 years ago with "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network," throws in one
amazingly sloppy car chase, but otherwise does nothing to perk up the
picture's sluggish pace.
Stone's work here has two modes, shrill and mushy, and her Noo Yawk
accent quickly unravels; in one scene she's talking about having been
in jail for "twee" years, while in the next she sharply pronounces the
"h" in "therapy." Bad dialects also hobble Northam and even George
C. Scott, who turns up briefly as one of Gloria's former sugar
daddies.
If there's anything to be said in the movie's favor, it's that
"Gloria" offers a few glimmers of the natural wit Stone demonstrated
during her recent appearance on Bravo's "Inside the Actors' Studio."
After Nicky, who's shared her motel bed the night before, tells Gloria
he likes sleeping with her, Stone delivers her reply - "You're not the
first guy to tell me that" - with a smug sneer that would have made
Mae West proud. James Sanford