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10 Films Ruined by Voice-Over Narration

By Christopher Campbell posted 6 months ago

A few weeks ago, Summit Entertainment released the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom online. Normally, this kind of marketing strategy is useful, particularly if the movie isn’t well known. However, it helps for such a movie to have a terrific opening, which grabs the viewer in and makes him/her need to see what happens after that teased beginning. The Brothers Bloom, unfortunately, has an unbearable start, enough that I couldn’t even get through the entire seven minutes. I turned the streaming video off at the 4:24 mark.

The primary cause of my annoyance was the voice-over narration, provided by actor/magician Ricky Jay, a man whose speech is easily recognizable, only not for good reason. His lisped reading, sounding like a poor man’s Wallace Shawn, ruined the movie for me immediately. And I decided within those few moments that I wouldn’t bother to go see The Brother’s Bloom in its entirety.

I later learned that Jay’s narration is only in the film for that seven-minute prologue that opens the film, so I am willing to give it another shot, with hope that it gets better. Due to my initial irritation, though, I’ve decided to share a list of ten other movies ruined by their voice-over narration.
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Classics, Lists

The Monster that Whit Stillman Built. BlogNosh 08/04/08

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

Are today’s bloggy cultural critics a thorn in Whit Stillman’s side, either because or in spite of the fact that “we’re all just stealing Nick’s lines from Metropolitan“? Maybe the next time Stillman emerges in search of his shadow, we’ll find out. In the meantime, Matt Dentler says Cinetic is working on distributing Metropolitan online “in the near future.” Although, of course, Last Days of Disco remains all but unavailable…
Related, sort of: Peter DeBruge writes of the “bootleg director’s cut” of 54, which restores Ryan Phillippe’s character to his original conception as an “overtly bisexual bartender, one of those erotic beings (like Terrence Stamp in Pasolini’s Teorema)…he woos club owner Mike Myers, makes it with record exec Sela Ward, kisses out-of-reach soap star Neve Campbell, gets frisky with best friend Breckin Meyer and then bangs his friend’s wife Salma Hayek in a bathroom stall.” You’ll allegedly be able to sample the excitement for yourself next weekend at the Sunshine in NYC, where Mark Christopher’s recut will screen at midnight.
“Zacharek’s first assumption is that Godard’s films went downhill after 1967. I’ll be blunt here: Zacharek musters absolutely no defense or evidence for this position.” Another review of a review of Everything is Cinema; this time it’s Only the Cinema on the first of the NYT reviews. Via The House Next Door.