Healthy Living Books DVD

Rating: - Does Amazon skew it's ratings unfairly in order to sell you dross?
Firstly I'd like to comment on Amazon's own star rating based on reviews... as I type this 111 people have previously reviewed this film with 56 giving it a 4 or 5 star rating and 55 giving it a 3 star rating or lower, yet Amazon manages to show this as a 4 star rating!!! What nonsense!!! 3.3 is the average, so don't be fooled into buying this dross because Amazon can't count!

As for the film itself... boring, soporific, monotonous, tedious, irksome, tiresome, humdrum... shall I continue? That's 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. How did this film manage to get so many nominations? The other films out at the time must have been truly awful.

The director makes a hash of things by only having one speed... snails pace. The scriptwriters can't have ever read the original book and with the exception of James McEvoy, who struggles manfully against such barriers, the acting is atrocious. Only the cinematography is worth mentioning in the plus column, but that hardly makes up for the grave failures elsewhere.

Redecorate your front room and watch the paint dry... it'll be more exciting, and far more satisfying.

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Rating: - Disappointing
Impressive cinematography, but otherwise I was let down and was expecting more from this, given the hype the film has had.

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Rating: - Atone for your sins...
Watching this woeful film should be penance enough! You'll be wishing for hellfire and brimstone if you manage to make it through to the end of this terrible film.
I'd read the book and loved it, so was really looking forward to seeing the film. I read all the glowing reviews; saw the actors and the director praised for their performances in a film that was faithful to the book... I obviously saw a totally different film.
The emotions of passion, pain & longing that were so palpable in the book were almost entirely missing in the film; in fact the only longing I felt was for this dire film to end! The only saving grace of this film was James McAvoy whose performance, considering the tripe he had to work with, was very good. If I could give this film minus stars I would.

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Rating: - OK, but not worth the hype
Atonement is probably one of those films where a viewer will get more out of it if he or she has read the novel it is based on. Alas I have not read Ian McEwan's book and as a result I found the film enjoyable but hardly an instant classic, as some critics would have us believe. The plot is paper thin (my wife, who has read the book, says that this is also true of the novel, but that this is more than compensated for by McEwan's extraordinary writing) which makes the film feel a little tedious. The acting is also somewhat patchy - James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave are all first-rate, but the perpetually over-rated Knightley is irritating right from the start - she is wooden, mumbles much of her dialogue ... and don't even get me started on her appearance! I really fail to see what the fuss is about her. The film looks great, though, and there is a nice 'twist' (if you can call it that) at the end. I'd happily watch it again, but don't believe the hype.

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Rating: - Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear
"Jon Fosters' review for amazon is so far from the truth i hope he's embarrassed. Allow me to look at a few comments:
"With a terrific cast and superb direction from the aforementioned Wright"-very poorly directed, in my humble opinion and the cast (with one exception- no, not Knightly)appalling.
"His trick also is to get the pacing of the film bang-on"-only if you like slow, slow and very slow
"it proves itself as a top quality drama, with a real emotional punch"-Who is this man? Did he watch the same pretentious dross that I did?
" Furthermore, it's one of the increasingly rare breed of films that sticks in your head for days after"- in the same way as realising that just because you're the 999,999th person to visit a web site you haven't really won a ferrari!