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| BELOVED (1998) - R
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ReviewScore: 56 out of 100
SBD Star Rating:
by Lew Irwin
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Although it is receiving generally respectful reviews, Oprah Winfrey's Beloved is garnering few all-out raves, which had been expected in the wake of the favorable buzz about the movie in recent weeks. Indeed, part of the criticism may be a backlash to that buzz. "Here's the news you won't get from the 16 national magazine covers and the all-Oprah-all-the-time channel that TV has become," Stephen Hunter writes in the Washington Post. "It's the long, hard sit." (The film runs nearly 3 hours.) Several critics point out that the film is faithful to Tony Morrison's book, with Janet Maslin commenting in the New York Times that director Jonathan Demme "succeeds uncannily well in bringing the novel's pulse to the screen." Judy Gerstel, in the Toronto Star agrees, noting that there isn't "a single scene that isn't absorbing, and very many ... are gripping." Jay Carr in the Boston Globe also concurs that Demme maintains "a meticulous fidelity" to the book. However, Joel Siegel on ABC's Good Morning America comments that such a fidelity actually works against the film. Says Siegel, "I think what happened was that they fell so much in love with the book [that] a decision was made not to change a word. But movies aren't books, and, in the end, Beloved is a film of a great book, not a great film." Kenneth Turan is one of several critics who give the film a mixed review, but weighted on the positive side: "Once this film gets its bearings," he writes, "the unsentimental fierceness of its vision brushes obstacles and quibbles from its path." The film does receive a few outright negative notices, however. Writes Rod Dreher in the New York Post, "It may be sacrilegious to say, but Beloved is not so hot."
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