They Might Be Giants

Forget Patton, this is George C. Scott's finest screen performance.

One of Freder's favorite movies, for its whole-hearted embrace of all people eccentric and odd, for its charm and unlikely romance, for the lovely performances from a top flight cast, and for its very daring ending, in which we witness nothing less than the triumph of imagination over reality. I'm not saying it's a great, or even a necessarily well-made movie: but I love it unreservedly.

"God, you're just like Don Quixote. You think everything is always something else." "Well, he had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far, that's all. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But thinking they might be...Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, we'd all still be out in the tall grass with the apes."

An eccentric millionaire (George C. Scott) believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes, and when he encounters a psychiatrist--Dr. Mildred Watson (Joanne Woodward)--he sweeps her up in a mystery whose reality is, perhaps, beside the point. Often very enjoyable, intelligently written (by James Goldman, from his play), and extremely well-acted, marred by a slapsticky climax that falls totally flat and an ambiguous ending that doesn't quite work. But Scott and Woodward are quite wonderful together.

I really loved this until the segment of the gathering up of their troupe and the confrontation at the grocery store; that really soured an otherwise great movie.

I found this dated and somewhat sexist/stereotypical. I would have preferred the characters not fall in love. The implication seems to be that because Dr. Watson is a lonely old maid she is vulnerable to falling in love and losing her mind under the influence of the first charming patient she meets.

Someone said this film is a flawed treasure. They're right. It plays the mindless straights against the colorful eccentrics, and it expects you to enjoy the game, but it takes a little arrogance to do so. If you've got a soft heart for this kind of thing you'll be taken away. If you're resolutely dispassionate you'll feel nothing.

It's a unique spin on Sherlock Holmes, I'll give it that. Funny enough and the performances are great, but it's all rather aimless since it can't decide just how far to take the premise.

It's a movie with interesting ideas, but bogged down largely by being a product of the 1970s. George C. Scott is excellent, of course, doing an expressive, authentic Holmes with just a hint of Doctor Who, and Joanne Woodward is up to the acting challenge. But, while "strength in nonconformity" is a strong theme, the simplistic "crazy is good" execution is lacking. (I do like the scene of them gathering up and marching down the street, though; if only it was all so stylized!)

when iconogassed, irrelephant, fakesenator and FrancoGonzo have something in their 90+ percentile i don't fuck around, and they came through as ever.

Interesting.

AKA Tears Will Be Shed.