Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Jack Clayton
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Actor: Diane Ladd, Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Royal Dano, Vidal PetersonDirector: Jack Clayton
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Cinematographer: Stephen H. Burum
Editor: Argyle Nelson Jr.
Editor: Barry Mark Gordon
Producer: Dan Kolsrud
Producer: Peter Douglas
Writer: Ray Bradbury
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-03
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Product features:
- One of Ray Bradbury's most popular and intriguing novels of good and evil comes to life in this spine-tingling motion picture. On a grim and gusty October day, two young boys encounter a distressed man who foretells of danger blowing their way. Soon after, the town is visited by a seductive stanger named Mr. Dark and his Pandemonium Carnival. Terrifying things begin to happen when the adventur
DVD Reviews of Something Wicked This Way Comes
DVD Review: Good try--but it's Pryce's performance that saves this
Summary: 4 Stars
SWTWC is a problematic film for me, because I want wholeheartedly to love it, but several things about it give me some reservations.
To start off, let's take it as a given that Ray Bradbury comes very close to being an unfilmable author. His writing creates a very special atmosphere that wafts off the page and envelopes the reader from the opening sentences. That alone is extremely difficult to recreate on film, though of course, atmospheric filmaking is certainly not impossible. Unfortunately, SWTWC seems at times to strain a bit too hard in its sets, costumes and effects, to recreate the "Bradbury mood", as opposed to selecting suitably atmospheric natural locales, and letting things happen naturally from that. In other words, there's a bit too much of a reek of 'stage set' about the whole thing that I feel ultimately detracts from, rather than helps to build, the proper mood.
It's been noted elsewhere by much more competent reviewers than me, that Bradbury's dialogue, which reads beautifully and poetically on the printed page, often comes out sounding clunky and false when mouthed by actors. I'd say that statement applies here, with one notable exception, that of Jonathan Pryce. His performance comes extraordinarily close to making Bradbury's words sound real, convincing, and yes, menacing when spoken aloud. Partially, it's that incredible voice ('dark' is definitely the right word for it!) and mainly, just because Pryce is possibly one of the best actors around today--totally unknown to most American viewers when this film was released, he wouldn't get his real critical dues here until "Brazil", a film in which he was also excellent, and at the complete opposite spectrum of Mr. Dark. (View the two films back-to-back to get a good appreciation of Pryce's versatility. You'd hardly recognize him as the same actor between these films.)
Probably the single biggest drawback for me is the performances of the two young boys. I hate to say it, but these two come off as likely candidates for the most uncharismatic child performers on film of all time. Neither of them covinced me for one moment that they were caught up in, or believed what was happening, or felt any genuine sense of danger from Dark's attempted seductions (I mean the moral, not the physical, variety). Child performers need especially to be natural in their playing if they are to at all convince an audience, and neither youth looked for one moment as though he were doing anything but playing to the director's prompts. This detracted strongly from the atmosphere of threatened innocence that the film is intended to generate.
A second, lesser, cavil would have to be the performance of Jason Robards as the father. I'll admit up front that I have never been a huge fan of this particular actor. I by no means think he's bad--I've seen him give some quite good performances over the years--but I do feel he's a bit overrated, and a fairly far cry from The Great Elder Statesman Of Acting that he was often put forth as being. He's competent here, sometimes a shade more than that, but he's clearly outclassed by Pryce in their scenes together. Robards is definitely not at ease with the dialogue, and this is particularly noticeable in the 'deserted library' sequence where he faces off against Dark. Pryce gives off an air of real danger in his taunts and promises, making the viewer fully believe that Will's dad could be in imminent peril of falling prey to Dark's temptations, while Robards just stands there with a rather hangdog look over the fact that he's just been called an old man. We see no real sense of inner struggle on his part; I would say that this is possibly the best scene in the film, but it's due to Pryce alone, and not Robards, that this is so. The same could be said of a number of other scenes in which he (Pryce) interacts with the other performers. Pryce clearly feels the evil of Bradbury's conception, and displays it in his acting, where the others can't even come close.
I don't fault the special effects; they were actually quite good for what was available at the time, although, as not unusual with Disney live-action movies of this era, there's a perhaps too-noticeable 'animated' look to some of them. But all in all, they work well, and the glimpses of Grier's Dust Witch are quite spooky, even though the character seems to be used to no real purpose in the film, as opposed to the deeply symbolic place she held in the novel. But that again, tends to be a consequence of adapting books to film, that authorial subtleties are pretty frequently lost or jettisoned for script purposes.
My reservations to one side, I still rate this film pretty highly, mainly on the strength of Pryce's portrayal, and on the fact that it was a good effort to do true cinematic justice to Bradbury (it probably does remain the best film adaptation of one of his works to date). If the rest of the film could have come up to the real gold standard of Pryce's abilities, I have no doubt it would have become an out-of-the-ballpark classic of fantasy films; as it stands, it's still an entertaining, and at times pretty satisfying attempt.
Description of Something Wicked This Way Comes
Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 08/03/2004Bestsellers in DVD
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