I had to read A Tale of Two Cities for my English class this year, and found it to be not that bad of a read, and it got VERY exciting towards the end. After we finished the book, our class watched this movie...while I had fun watching it because its so terrible at points I couldn't stop laughing, it's really a travesty.
The first problem is that almost all of the acting (perhaps with the exception of Darnay and Dr. Manette) is remarkably terrible. They have hired a whole movie's worth of low budget B-Actors, who simply can't be taken seriously. Their emotions are laughable, they deliver lines terribly, their accents are inconsistent, and they often overact trying to compensate for their own bad acting.
The worst thing is probably the script itself. Since I have read the book I followed the movie very well, but to someone who hasn't, they would be completely lost. The movie never keeps on clear direction or narrative and jumps all over the place spastically. The story is hardly told at all, its almost as if the script is ATOTC highlights strung together into almost 4 hours of hell.
So if you're DESPERATE for a movie version, give it a shot. But terrible acting and terrible script keep this from being all it could be.
The first problem is that almost all of the acting (perhaps with the exception of Darnay and Dr. Manette) is remarkably terrible. They have hired a whole movie's worth of low budget B-Actors, who simply can't be taken seriously. Their emotions are laughable, they deliver lines terribly, their accents are inconsistent, and they often overact trying to compensate for their own bad acting.
The worst thing is probably the script itself. Since I have read the book I followed the movie very well, but to someone who hasn't, they would be completely lost. The movie never keeps on clear direction or narrative and jumps all over the place spastically. The story is hardly told at all, its almost as if the script is ATOTC highlights strung together into almost 4 hours of hell.
So if you're DESPERATE for a movie version, give it a shot. But terrible acting and terrible script keep this from being all it could be.