Dave Smith

Has more endings than Return of the King. Tries hard to be realistic in showing an ageing comeback driver (Brad Pitt) struggle using his competitive zeal more than his vaunteddriving skills. But essentially the structure of the film wraps predictably around nine F1 races across the globe that have the dramatic quality of watching nine high quality computer games. The plot is close to non existent and is heavily signaled at key points. It is a film that is constantly giving itself melodramatic CPR I sat through rather than watched it.

Chalamet's performance is superb in film that delivers past incidents with supreme clarity and with a strong ability to recreate the atmosphere of New York and Newport in the Sixties. I will think of the movie as episodic with little overarching philosophy. Except perhaps the persistent irony that those who proclaimed freedom from the rooftops showed a dogmatic insistence on Dylan singing only what and how they wanted him to. They abhorred violence but got extra violent when a mere electric guitar appeared. The launch of The Times They Are a Changing at Newport sent shivers down my spine. It gave the song new drive and vitality. The sense of being there is never better created than with that magnificent old warhorse. Overall we experience, in patches,) quite a bit but learn somewhat less. That's still pretty good though.

Impressive performance in many ways but a shorter film would probably have been a better film. Brendan Fraser deserves much credit but so many of the script ideas seem to be sledgehammered into place multiple times. Charlie reveals himself to his students then to the peripheral pizza deliverer. An essay by his daughter gets endlessly referred to and passed back and forth with leaden footed references to the whale in Moby Dick. A young fellow of no great importance keeps coming tediously through the door before being sent on his unmerry way. The voluntary nurse pops in with stethoscope and obligatory but futile tut tuts " every 100 pounds taken off can count" (as it were). And so on. A simpler mix of less overworked ideas might have worked wonders for the overall effect. The film does have a point but it could be more pithily made. By the way I wonder why so many have whinged about the prosthetic obese version of Mr Fraser. There are endlessly prolific, if lighter, versions of him on view around feeding time at KFC especially in the US. Just another pending cliche in a movie that's overly full of them.