CHICAGO - MOVIE REVIEWS DOUBT

MOVIE REVIEWS DOUBT

"I know people who are absolutely certain what conclusion they should draw from this film. They disagree," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times about John Patrick Stanley's Doubt , starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The same could be said about the critical reaction to the film itself, although many would agree with Ebert's conclusion " Doubt has exact and merciless writing, powerful performances and timeless relevance. It causes us to start thinking with the first shot, and we never stop. Think how rare that is in a film." Contrast those words with those of Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News who concludes that Shanley has not effectively converted his stage play to the screen. "Shanley clearly could not bring himself to excise some of his more theatrical, verbally overdecorated lines from the screenplay. These may have sounded good live but, filmed, they make for clunky moments that yank you right out of the picture," says Strauss. To be sure, even the film's naysayers find much to like about it. Rafer Guzmán in Newsday faults director Shanley for being "painfully literal," and concludes, "Given the incendiary subject and powerful cast, Doubt could have been explosive, but ends up merely solid." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times also voices his doubts about Shanley's decision to "open up" his play -- which won four Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize -- for the screen version. In "changing it from a four-actor stage play to a film with multiple characters and numerous extras, Shanley seems to have lost a certain amount of faith in what he'd written," Turan says. There is even wide disagreement over Meryl Streep's performance as a nun who suspects a priest of pedophelia. Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post begins her review by applauding "A great actress delivers a breathtaking star turn in Doubt " Lou Lumenick in the New York Post begins his by writing "The marvelous Meryl Streep is frighteningly good." But Manohla Dargis seems ambivalent about her performance, writing in one sentence that Streep "blows in like a storm, shaking up the story's reverential solemnity," then, in the next. "The performance may make no sense in the context of the rest of the film..." and later "Ms Streep appears to be in a Gothic horror thriller while everyone else looks and sounds closer to life..." And Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe faults Shanley for allowing Streep to "exhaust a range of ominous facial expressions. It's like watching a jack-o'-lantern pull out all the stops." He agrees that Streep is the "pièce de resistance" of the film, but he adds "If only she resisted a little more."

15/12/2008