Some of it felt awfully manipulative, but I bawled anyway.

Yep. I spent almost the entire thing crying my eyes out while in the back of my head I was thinking "'On every page of your imagination?' Come (sob!) on..."

No worries, ita. It was all good.

See, I never got this. It felt like the cast and crew were trying to present a relatively serious action movie and failing horribly. If they were embracing the cheese, they were doing a good job of hiding it from me. Perhaps they were brushing a little to close too the cheese while passing it in the hall, occaisionally daring to share a brief touch when alone in a shadowed alcove, but they certainly weren't doing it shamelessly for all to see.

I guess what I mean is, is that it seemed like somebody thought that the movie ought to be played seriously, and all of the actors got together, and were like, dude, so cheesy. So they played up the cheese, because it amused them, while still leaving it open to claiming that they were totally serious to their boss, or something. Because if you look for it, you can totally see that the actors know it's cheesy, and they are laughing at it with you. If that makes sense, and I don't think it does. Whatever. I enjoyed it.

Somebody shoulda cast Lauren Bacall and Charlotte Rambling as mother-daughter in something. They've got the same colt-lean body, the same slanty-eyed, husky-voiced, smoldering sexuality.

Good call. They have both played female leads in movies based on Raymond Chandler books, Bacall opposite Bogie in The Big Sleep, and Rampling opposite Mitchum in Farewell my Lovely.

Who's hotter? Charlotte Rampling or Bo Derek?

What Hec said. No contest.

it seemed like somebody thought that the movie ought to be played seriously

But who? The pre-release info I got was that it was supposed to be in The Mummy vein. Now, I think it was nowhere as successful, but I never had any impression it was supposed to be anything other than a riff on august cheese that had gone before.

The pre-release info I got was that it was supposed to be in The Mummy vein. Now, I think it was nowhere as successful, but I never had any impression it was supposed to be anything other than a riff on august cheese that had gone before.

If I had heard that, I think I might have enjoyed the movie much more. I do like cheese, if I'm in the mood for it.

That being said, I don't think that movies should have to rely on pre-release info on how they are to be watched for the movie to be appreciated in the spirit intended. In an ideal world, the clues for how to watch should be able to be picked up from the first several minutes of the movie itself.

But weren't the first few minutes cheesy? I know I went into it in a different frame, but I thought the B&W extremely cheesy, and by the time they were also ripping James Bond, the cheese was set.

I'm not sure why I didn't pick up on the cheese right away. I think that what happened to me is that the style of the film fell into some equivalent of the "Uncanny Valley" where it hit just the wrong balance of seriousness and silliness for me to either take it seriously or sit back and enjoy the silly.

I did enjoy the whole Vatican as secret-service idea, lots.

I got that iot was cheesy, but it wasn't cheesy enough, IMO. It seemed that the CGI stuff was meant to be impressive (even when they really weren't) rather than cool and fun and so all the fight scenes changed the tone of the movie. In the Mummy, the tone of the film was consistently light throughout. When Brendan Fraser's character was being all earnest and noble we could kinda laugh at the over-the-topness at the same time that we were genuinely rooting for him. In this film, the whole brother subplot never seemed to have any ironic distance.

I did enjoy the whole Vatican as secret-service idea, lots.

Then did you ever see 'Hudson Hawk'? Most people I know have mixed feelings about it, but I love it.

Somebody shoulda cast Lauren Bacall and Charlotte Rambling as mother-daughter in something. They've got the same colt-lean body, the same slanty-eyed, husky-voiced, smoldering sexuality.

With Eliza Dusku as Charlotte's daughter. Because it's more than a two-generation thing.