Cary Grant rarely made missteps when choosing his films but boy did he fall flat on his ass with PEOPLE WILL TALK.
It's an hour and fifty minutes of pompous, self indulgent, self-important, boring hot air.
Right from the opening titles this film screams "prestigious studio art house project" produced with the sole intention of demonstrating that, despite frequent appearances to the contrary, Hollywood (and Twentieth Century Fox in particular) knew that culture wasn't spelt with a K.From the name checks for Brahms and Wagner, and studio head Darryl F.Zanuck's 'produced by' credit, to the three pages of explanatory text, it's obvious this isn't going to be just another middle-brow Cary Grant comedy drama. THIS IS SERIOUS ART!
It's also practically unwatchable.
Grant's portrayal of the slightly Christ-like, ludicrously named Dr Noah Praetorius is unforgivably dull. He regurgitates the ponderous dialogue in a flat,monotonous drone, and his tendency to pontification made me want to punch him in the mouth just to shut him up and wipe that expression of smug superiority off his face (which, by the way, is inexplicably tanned to a deep shade of mahogany)..That none of the other characters in the film reach this same conclusion is because they're all equally annoying.
In particular Jeanne Crain, as the object of his affections, matches him line for pretentious line of badly written, overly theatrical dialogue.Neither of them are remotely credible as real people - they're philosophical debates on legs.
Add to this Olympic gold medal-grade windbaggery a plot that is as confused as it is uninteresting and the result is turkey so unappealing not even the President would pardon it for Thanksgiving.
22 January 2011
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