Great Expectations

RATING: R

RELEASE: Jan. 30, 1998

STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft, and Robert DeNiro

DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuaron

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY: Charles Dickens

DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox

GENRE: Drama

CONTENT: Eclectic worldview with fatalistic elements and regret; twenty obscenities and five profanities; mild violence including abduction and man stabbed with knife; strong sexual scenes with seduction, prolonged foreplay, woman strips and poses nude for man, briefly depicted and implied fornication, and French kissing; full female nudity (but no genitalia), many drawings of full female nudity and upper male nudity; alcohol use; and smoking.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older teenagers and adults.

SUMMARY: A piece of pop fluff with a high-bred name, the new movie adaptation of Great Expectations has unreal ized potential. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow play Finn and Estella, two young people who never discover pure love as they seize the day before going their separate ways. Though touching on themes of fate and romance, this movie contains minimal elements of what makes the Dickens' tale great and includes a perverse modernization by inserting extensive sex and sensual scenes. Great Expectations attempts to bring the characters and situations of the famous Charles Dickens' novel to life in modern day America, but with only marginal success. Though performances are eager and the script above average, the eroticizing of this story and the absence of the hard times of 19th Century England make this movie more of an earnest experiment than an entertaining crowd pleaser.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 30, 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved