Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Eric-1226 The thought struck me recently that this movie was unfavorably received by critics and audiences alike at the time of its release (1986) because of the celebrity status of the two leading stars - Madonna and Sean Penn. But, if you watch the movie today, some twenty five years later, and if you are able to put the hype and the celebrity status of those two stars out of your mind, then, the movie doesn't seem so bad. In fact, it's actually a pretty good escapist adventure romp along the lines of an Indiana Jones movie.I watched this movie for the first time just recently, as I was scared away from viewing it all those many years prior, simply because of all the negative hype surrounding it - the hype that said it was a real stinker. But I actually found it to be a pretty engrossing story, with a nicely done cinematography that oozed a colorful, exotic, sometimes even enchanting Oriental atmosphere that was hard to dismiss. Some of the shots, as filmed, were... beautiful! So don't let 1980's critics scare you away: this movie is worth a shot, and if you can mentally distill the two leads down to just being a guy and a girl from 1930's America thrust into an adventure escapade set in a faraway exotic locale, then you just might enjoy this movie for what it was meant to be: pure escapist entertainment.Not perfect, but then again, NOT the stinker it has been made out to be.

Michael_Elliott Shanghai Surprise (1986) * 1/2 (out of 4) I love watching bad movies from all periods of history and this 1986 turkey has one of the worst reputations out there. While this is certainly a bad movie it's still far from one of the worst ever made. The film's simple story involves a missionary worker (Madonna) who hires an American (Sean Penn) stranded in China to locate some missing opium that needs to be used for medical reasons. The two end up in one shady place after another and running into corrupt cops, gangsters and countless double-crossers. SHANGHAI SURPRISE certainly is a surprise because it features Sean Penn, one of the greatest actors of the past thirty-years, in such a bad performance that one really needs to consider it one of the worst performances by any great actor in the history of cinema. I really can't think of one good thing to say about the performance other than it's so bad that it gives the film the only reason to be viewed because as a major fan of his I can't help but admit that I was drawn into the movie simply because of how bad it was. This might seem crazy to say but had Penn's performance been somewhat better I think the film would have been even worse and nearly impossible to get through. While Penn's performance is bad, what really kills this movie is the lackluster direction by Jim Goddard who doesn't seem to know what type of movie he wants to make. There's no question that this is a rip-off of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARC but the problem here is that the action doesn't work, the comedy isn't funny and there's simply no adventure or characters to care about. This movie is incredibly lifeless from the first sequence to the very last one and even when we do get an action scene it's so poorly put together that you can't help but yawn. The screenplay has so many plot holes that you can't help but quit trying to figure out anything going on and things only get worse as more and more characters are dragged into the mess. We've already established that Penn's not very good here but the same goes for his then-wife Madonna. I've never been one to overly bash here and while the performance isn't the best, you can't overlook this because she's not an actress. At least she can say that she out-performed the future two-time Oscar-winner. Richard Griffiths has a small supporting role and is one of the few good things. Ex-Beatle George Harrison was the executive producer of this thing and he co-wrote the score and performed the songs. The score isn't too bad but it doesn't fit the film too well and none of the songs are all that memorable.

CTS-1 OK. So someone took an A-list actor and his famous singer/ part time kind of-sort of actress wife and decided that the movie would be carried on the weight of the names alone. Substitute "fiancee" for wife and one has Gigli.But it is not- it is Shanghai Surprise, possibly the most ill-conceived movie of the 1980's (and yes, I have seen "Hobgoblins.")This movie has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Ridiculous plot, painfully bad acting (Madonna as a missionary? She didn't buy it either, so she says her lines in a flat tone which just screams "get me out of this costume and get me my check"), cinematography worthy of an old episode of "Fantasy Island," lame ending.If, by some chance, you stumble across a copy of this in an unused corner of your local video rental store, call your local hazardous waste disposal hotline- do not rent it.But do not forget that this horror exists. Some people forgot- and thus "Gigli" was born.

westpac Who thought this up? It must have looked brilliant when they got Sean and Madonna in the same movie. Unfortunately Sean goes through the whole movie looking like a kid pretending he's in a movie and Madonna as usual just plays herself, badly. Nothing to see here, move along folks...