|
|
|
|
| RETURN TO PARADISE (1998) - R
|
|  |
|
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
View Credits | See Other Reviews
| |
Reviews are decidedly mixed on Return to Paradise. Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post observes, for example, "Something hard and unfamiliar bumps you in the head halfway through Return to Paradise. It's not an asteroid, or even a comet: It's a kernel of substance! Ouch! This movie actually compels you to think!" But Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News has just the opposite reaction, saying "you'll just wish the writers and directors had respected your intelligence a little more." Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan thinks that the film has a "fatal tendency to take itself more seriously than the material merits. A potboiler where [Ann] Heche's character answers the phone in her underwear because she looks cute in foundation garments should not be confusing itself with a Human Rights Watch manifesto." And Jay Carr in the Boston Globe calls the film "a misfire" that "never catches us up in its issues." Taking a middle ground is Janet Maslin in the New York Times who finds that "the film's cool sober texture and its clever characters are often more interesting than the larger plot." |
|
|
|
