Winter's Tale

Winter's Tale is a mess and fails in most of the areas that count. Its story is unbelievable and not told very effectively, it's completely unsubtle in telling us what point it wants to make, its characters are too shallow to make their romance work, and while it tries to mix the real with the supernatural, it doesn't do it in a way that really makes sense. It looks good and has a great score, but it's too long -- particularly in its middle section -- and too lacking to be worth seeing.

What a piece of arse. Ultimately I just couldn't care; I didn't believe the romance. I think the casting was off on this or maybe they just phoned it in. Maybe a bit of both, though there were a couple decent moments.It was 2 hours and it seemed like an eternity. The dialogue was hokey and instead of being poetic it was cheesy and wooden. They take an hour establishing the central relationship that causes all this but it still felt forced. Decently shot though.

Take one flying horse, a pinch of Devil living in a sewer, a hefty portion of Russell Crowe chewing up the scenery and looking down a lot. Mix in Colin Farrell with really weird hair, Jennifer Connolly letting a complete stranger look after her dying child, and a ridiculously sexy girl who has never been kissed, and is dying of consumption. .. stir in a gallon of syrup and create an unbelievable mess of film that makes no sense at all. This film would appear to do the book NO service whatsoever.

Destiny, magic, time travel, Lucifer in Manhattan, winged souls in the stars. It all gets tossed at the screen--the drama routinely veering from overwrought demonic bombast to irrational treacle-oozing devotion. And after the rambling new-agey spirituality finally runs its narrative course and Colin Farrell rides his winged horse into the sky ... well, none of it makes much sense at all. (pluggedin.com)

Oh, good Lord. Based on a well-loved (and lengthy) novel about a doomed love affair and its fantastical reverberations, WINTER'S TALE soon crumbles under the weight of a script filled with holes and burdened with a murky internal logic--and a villain (Russell Crowe) who is all talk and no real menace. A handsome production (marred by some shoddy effects) and a decent performance by Colin Farrell can't overcome Akiva Goldsman's amateurish direction and the generally slipshod acting.

Retitled A New York Winter's Tale for British audiences concerned that regular ol' Winter's Tale might be set in grey, rainy London or something equally tedious. Vaguely enjoyable at times - the sequences set in the present day worked best for me, and Colin Farrell is kinda decent - but overwhelmingly silly, overacted and clumsily written. The sprawlng elements never quite coalesce and it's all a bit predictable.

This movie is so ridiculous and I honestly loved it.

I don't know why this is getting trashed so. It is hard to categorize. I'd call it a fantasy love story. It certainly doesn't fit the mold for romance novels. Excellent performances by Colin Farrell and especially Russell Crowe turning in his best in many years. It's main flaw is falling into the fate/soul mates/meant to be trap which sort of undermines the rest of it. If you can't abide fantasy, you'll hate it. I know the horse was there for the women, but it's still cool.

Not as bad as Crowe's dodgy Irish accent foretold.

A tale that gave me chills. I wouldn't say I enjoyed this movie the whole time. For a large portion of this film, I cocked my head to the side at stared at it in a confused fashion. Was this a romance film? Angels and Demons film? Was it a ripoff of Stardust? I really couldn't piece it all together. I thought Farrell did a good job and Jessica Brown Findlay might be one of the most beautiful girls ever in film (I loved the sections she was in)...

It's not as bad as I was led to believe, but it's still not good. Around the time Will Smith showed up as Lucifer, I just sat back and let this ludicrous movie play out. It's eager, pretty, and well-intentioned, but it's clumsiness and silliness just leave a preposterous mess. If only Akiva Goldsman weren't an awful writer. May end up having significant rewatch value as a movie to get drunk during and make fun of.

Alright, what to say about this movie...? Let's start with the great acting of Findlay, and the unsuited role for Farrell. I thought at moments Farrell was good, but a lot of other actors would have been more suited to fill this role. The story is a great idea, but not so greatly executed. It was entertaining, therefore I give it a 47/100.

I really enjoyed the fantasy elements of the film which require the viewer to have an open mind about how things could be, The cinematography is also really good, especially the scenes in the past. I could care less about the romantic story being told which is the main reason it isn't a great movie in my books.

C-

I enjoy fantasy as much as anyone, but holy crap does this ever come off as pretentious and silly. There is no world-building whatsoever, the audience is just dropped into this fantastical New York and expected to roll with it. Good fantasy builds its world FIRST. The dialogue often reads like a slideshow of poorly-written Facebook motivational memes. Crowe has his very good moments (his meetings with "The Judge" are real treats). Farrell has far fewer moments, and is the model of inconsistency.

Just terrible. It feels like it belongs on the Hallmark Channel (if they had a fantasy/supernatural series), and the source material must surely have been a Harlequin Romance. Yet it was a novel that was apparently widely read by actual adults. The world is so very strange.

boredom in epic proportions

Goldsman shows how out of depth he is with Winter's Tale. The film takes the fantastical and forces it into a conventional narrative without adequately building the world. The result is a film devoid of charm that comes across as preposterous, with narration that feels pretension. The acting isn't much better with Crowe's painful rendition of an Irish accent.

ger; [winter's tale]; ein einbrecher verliebt sich in eine junge dame - während seine alte gang und der dämonenführer ihn töten will.; (ruhig und ein paar seltsame szenen);

Parts of the movie were interesting and I wanted to like it. But Russel Crowe's character kills ever scene he shows up in. Better bad guy might have made this film worth watching.

Só pelo humor

The fantasy part is where this romantic movie loses me. Flying horses, miracles just gets a little too heavy juxtaposed with reality. It is a passable movie.

I keep thinking that I completely missed the point and an epiphany suddenly will make me realise that this is some kind of magic realism masterpiece. Until then - I'm not quite sure if this even qualifies as a movie.

Abysmal.It's like a really bad fan fiction, utterly nonsensical wish fulfilment. No internal logic. If you are deliberately watching because it's a bad movie though.......delicious.

This is pretty horrendous, although it is very beautifully filmed? I really wanted to like it, and it reminded me of how consistently stupid Cloud Atlas was. However, Cloud Atlas (somehow) made me totally surrender all of my want to criticize it and just let the story overwhelm me, whereas this film was just laughably bad at points. When everything can be solved by miracles (aka lazy writing) and your actors are visibly trying their hardest to sell D-grade dialogue, you just know a film is bad.

Farrell with some good puns, beautiful visuals, but the script was poor and it made the movie to look rather silly than good.

What the hell was this? Never read the novel, but I'm pretty sure Goldsman fucked up again. This is one hilarious piece of shit movie but you will laugh so much because it' just so inept at any level.

Colin farrell on a flying horse and Russel Crowe as the devil. Need i say more? This was garbage from start to finish!

A modern fairy tale set in New York starring Collin Farrell, Russell Crowe, and Jessica Brown Findlay. I'll be honest I wanted it to be great, but I knew better. It had great photography, great acting, albeit Russell Crowe's accent was incredibly annoying and kind of funny how some scenes he'd totally lost it. But ultimately the story just wasn't good enough to make the film great despite most of the actor's best efforts. It was cute how it played like the dark side of It's a Wonderful Life!

Every aspect of this film is terrible. Poor performances are exacerbated by a nonsensical script which needlessly jumps through time just to make extra sure that we don't care about anything thats happening.

very good movie

I haven't read the book, but I guess that some books are meant to stay just as so. Total waste of Will Smith and Russell Crowe! I kept hoping that a magic moment would make it all worth it, I really wanted to like it - never happened! I completely missed the point.