Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not A Good Sequel, 26 April 2009
Don't you just hate it when a director decides to make a sequel of a movie that REALLY didn't need one? This is very much the case with Cédric Klapisch - L'Auberge Espagnol was fine on it's own, but he insisted to make Russian Dolls, a film which is quite dull compared to its predecessor, which was quite funny, and had never a dull moment.
Romain is back as Xavier Rousseau, who's now a writer, who writes love stories for a living. We get to see his torrid love life, and how he just seems to go from bad to worse. He falls in love with anything in a dress, and he soon pays the price. He's reunited with Wendy when he writes a script for the BBC, and soon finds himself going to Russia to celebrate Willaim's wedding.
This isn't a bad film, but it just seems so unnecessary. Romain Duris seems to be less into this than he was with the original film, yet Wendy (Kelly Reilly) seems to be enjoying her role more. Audrey Tautou isn't good in this though, she grinds on your nerves as this needy girl - who you wish Xavier would just ask kindly to go away - but the star in this has to be Kevin Bishop. He's showing a much better acting role in this version of the film, and seems to have matured into William perfectly.
The DVD is OK, with a making of - but as I didn't enjoy this movie I didn't feel the need to watch it. It's nice we get a 5.1 mix as well as a 2.0 mix, both very good and well balanced. Also good that the subtitles can be turned off, though during the Russian section you'll need them, unless you're fluent. There's not as much multilingual stuff in this film, it's mainly French and English.
Worth taking a look if you're curious like me about the sequel, but otherwise I'd give this a miss.
|
|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slightly unrealistic sequel, but still full of character, 11 Oct 2009
I enjoyed the emotional chaos and the comedy of "Pot Luck" (or "Spanish Inn" if you prefer) so I went and checked out this sequel "Russian Dolls" as soon as possible. The truth is, it's not as good, and despite having the same writer, most of the same cast and the same apparent style, it still manages to be a very different film from the first.
While the first film was a believable memoir of a year living as an exchange student, this film seems more like writer-director Cédric Klapisch's personal fantasy.
The main character Xavier is now a writer, who travels between Paris, London and St Petersburg meeting a succession of beautiful women, managing to bed almost every single one of them and then agonising about which one to choose. He behaves quite immorally and doesn't illicit any sympathy at all, yet essentially he 'gets away with it'.
There's much less comedy here than in "Pot Luck". The awkward situations (for example when two of Xavier's out-of-his-league girlfriends accidentally meet) are just awkward, rather than being an amusing farce.
Romain Duris keeps everything subtle with his performance, and essentially just keeps a permanently puzzled expression on his face while he allows everybody else to act around him. The British contingent- Kelly Reilly and Kevin Bishop- get much more substantial and interesting roles here than they did in "Pot Luck", and they both steal the show whenever they're on.
Despite being disappointed by the film compared to "Pot Luck", I'm going to give it 4 stars mainly for the strong cast- as well as Reilly and Bishop, Cecile De France and Audrey Tautou put in great performances.
The main DVD extra is a 45-minute 'making of' which is mainly just handheld 'behind the scenes' camera footage of filming certain scenes, without any narrative and without telling you much of interest about the process. The extras are missable.
|
|
|
|