The main reason I chose to watch this movie was because it had the actor I think is the best in the business today: Philip Seymour Hoffman. And the second reason was the director, P. T. Anderson. Unfortunately, Philip didn't have a bigger role in the movie. Nonetheless, he did his little role amazingly well.
The real star of the this movie, much to my surprise, was Tom Cruise. He was fabulous as the self-help coach of a system for men to "tame" women, and the author of the book Seduce and Destroy, which he uses for his coaching. This must be Tom Cruise's best performance along with his leading role in Eyes Wide Shut. If you're a fan of Tom, don't miss this movie!
The story is fantastic and the way it's presented on the screen is stunning. It's a 3 hour movie, but I didn't even move out of my chair for once. It's emotional and gripping till the end (except for the end?). Here are the characters you have in the movie:
- A self-help coach with a dark past
- A man on his deathbed with a dark past
- A woman who has cheated on her husband
- A girl who's a drug addict
- A cop who becomes a laughing stock because he lost his gun
- A man who has cheated on his wife
- A wiz-kid who's not allowed to go to the bathroom to take a leak because he's on a live quiz show
- A male nurse desperately trying to reach a long-lost son of his patient, who's now on his deathbed
- A man hiding his love for another man
Wait a minute, did I tell you that Julianne Moore was gorgeous in this? Oh, by the way, she acted really well, just like everyone in this movie, especially in the medical shop scene.
Well, here comes the bad part which I found very out of place in the movie, but not all of them will agree, and I totally respect their opinion. When it rains, it pours. Did you notice that in the tagline? Well, it pours in this movie but not rain drops. Then what else? Frogs!!! That's what else. Yes, there's a frog rain in the movie, I don't even know how to say it. I get it, I get it, it's meant to be symbolic with some bible verse or something like that, but I felt it was totally out of place. It was all going well till it started raining frogs. Can you believe that?
Anyway, that didn't spoil the movie for me. I just think it was a bit overdone. Paul Thomas Anderson has surely entered in the list of directors I'm going to be following. I didn't really like his There Will Be Blood, and I thought Boogie Nights was excellent but not my kind. Well, this movie is surely my kind. If you're a casual moviegoer, you won't like this movie because it's extremely long and there's no "fun" in this movie - no cars jumps into the sea and no bomb blasts. It's pure drama at its (almost) best. I really want to give this movie an 8/10, but I have to penalize for all the frogs - not that I hate that poor creature but it's just that I didn't want to see them in this movie, that's all.
Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars with a score of 7/10. A must watch for a movie buff.
Edit: I changed my mind, I'm giving it the full score for the 4 stars. 8/10. This is too good of a movie to not give an 8.
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