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The sequel to Rocky Horror Picture Show is a major misfire. Unable to get a story that worked, or would work with out its "stars" since Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick having moved on to other gigs, Richard O'Brien was forced to come up with something else. What he came up with is a spin on TV domestic life as Brad and Janet, played here by Cliff DeYoung and Jessica Harper, go on a TV show to sort out their marital strife. What transpires is the world as TV studio as the world is seen to be nothing more than a stage for the camera to film everyone and everything.
The idea is sound. Heck, it was used in some variation in the Truman Show, and to a lesser degree EdTV, but here the idea never really gels. Perhaps its because everything is in a studio that film falls down, I'm not sure. Certainly its not helped by a script which only occasionally works. The movie sputters from one thing to the next with out really seeming to have a direction. The cast is mostly fine and rises above the fair at best script. Only Jessica Harper, Star of Phantom of the Paradise and Suspiria seems to falter as if unsure of the mediocre material.
The best thing is the movie are the songs which are quite good and cry out for a better venue.
Seeing this film again for the first time in probably 20 years was both a pleasure (there was a reason the songs have stuck in my head, they are good) and displeasure (the story just doesn't work). Thinking back to when I saw this on a bootleg video copy in the early 1980's (hey it was the only way to see it for the longest time) I wasn't so wrong in thinking I had missed something, I had, I missed taking the time out to see a better movie.
Rocky Horror fans should see it once just to say they have, everyone else should probably avoid it unless you want to hear some really good songs stuck in a really poor movie.
score 3/10
dbborroughs 19 October 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1501314/ |
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28-2-2021 00:06:15