Review of The Great Beauty (2013) by Trevor W — 20 Mar 2015

Sorry, but I did not find great beauty in the Oscar-winning Foreign Language Italian flick "The Great Beauty". Call me not cultured enough, but I did not find enough intriguing qualities in this movie to hail at as a deserving Oscar-winning foreign language movie; but what do I know, as long as I inject great beauty in my corny movie puns, that is all I need. Anyways, Writer-Director Paolo Sorrentino's movie stars Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old Italian socialite who wrote a classic Italian novel decades ago but never wrote another book again. Gambardella preferred to gamble his lifestyle instead in the world of lavish parties, beautiful women, and daring adventures. Let's just say that Gambardella is no geriatric Cinderella. This premise of him living the aforementioned lifestyle instead of focusing on his writing artistry is beated on by a dead horse so much by Sorrentino, that it made me transcend to a great boredom mode. Now, I must say that the film's cinematography is tops. it is a love letter to Rome. But that is all I really found beauty in "The Great Beauty:, but what a beauty it was. Servillo's performance was fair but not great. So "The Great Beauty" is not a totally ugly movie, but I have done, I mean seen better.

*** Average.