h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have to disagree completely. I thought The Shining was comedic, ridiculous and not at all frightening. Perhaps because I was, and am, a big fan of the book which is nail-bitingly intense, it was particularly hard to stomach this rendering. The movie was so badly cast and took such enormous liberties with the book that it was barely recognisable to me. There was no subtlety - and so many wonderfully frightening scenes from the book were either missed out completely or twisted out of all recognition, it was a crying shame. Of course I don't expect movies to follow the plotline of books exactly, but this went way beyond artistic license and out the other end.

I love Jack Nicholson, but he was the completely wrong actor for this part. He overwhelmed the part totally. Instead of being a generally likeable family man who had some deep problems, and who therefore became the weak link in the chain which the hotel was able to exploit, he instead became this caricature of a psychotic loony, someone I felt no compassion for; he was just weird, annoying and scary in a very banal way. Scary in the sense that being punched in the mouth is scary, but not in the sense that listening to the creaking noises in a dark, unknown house is scary. I prefer my horror a lot more subtle than this.

The wife (Shelley Duvall) was impossible to take seriously - she constantly made me think she was playing it for laughs, her goggle eyed attempts at fear were ludicrous, and she was downright annoying at times. No compassion there either.

As for the boy, well he was a good enough actor, given what he had to work with. Instead of the ominous presence of Tony - the boy's alter ego, who attempts to warn Danny about the Overlook - we have, what? Oh yes, he talks to his finger in a funny voice. If it wasn't so hilarious, it would be pitiful. Saying that, I did not much enjoy the limp tv mini-series made by Stephen King either. He wimped out totally on the ending, and the whole atmosphere was bland, and it was basically not very frightening. At least he improved on the casting though, the characters were a lot more true to their original conception.

To sum up, the movie The Shining by Stanley Kubrick was ridiculous, badly cast, bizarrely directed, totally over-acted and about as frightening as Neighbours. Of course, that's just my opinion.

Regards

Crap, I meant to click on the reply box in The Shining topic, not start a new topic...ho hum....

I've added the URL for your comments here into the one for The Shining

Thank the Lord. I thought I was the only one who hated this overblown, ridiculous movie...

>I've added the URL for your comments here into the one for The Shining

>Many thanks.