Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Battle of Shaker Heights

This is topic The Battle of Shaker Heights in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=000625

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-21-2003, 03:29 AM:

Large servings of donkey poo droppings can be had with this flick. In fact, eating poo droppings of donkeys would probably be more entertaining than sitting through this epic length film. Well, technically it was only 78 minutes, but it sure as hell felt like 2 1/2 hours!

So right before I went into this screening I found out that apparently this film is the result of Damon and Assflex's "Project Greenlight", where they more or less get nobodys to send in their scripts, throw a million bucks into a budget and film the winning script. Ooooooh, sound exciting? Well I must admit I was intrigued at the idea and went into this flick with anticipation of something a little different and refreshing. DAMN WAS I WRONG! Anyway getting back to the description, a million bucks is throwaway change these days for a movie. There is just no way the studio can possibly lose money on this. Hell, even GIGLI brought in more money than that, and we're talking GIGLI! Miramax (and apparently Blockbuster video) had nothing to lose. Oh no wait, they did have something to lose, respect of the people who have to sit through this piece of [bs]

Now to give credit where credit is due, there were about half a dozen times during the movie that I laughed out loud as a result from a really good line of dialogue. It's just that the entire rest of the movie was as boring as watching donkeys make poo (hence the analogy above). I will say that the sound mix was pretty darned good for such a low budget film. Whoever did the mix is probably the most talented person involved with this film. (Note this movie is in SRD only, so if you are a masochist choose your theater wisely.)

Really, don't even waste your time with this as a video rental from Blockbuster! Sadly though this film will probably do quite a bit of business from the "making of" tv show, or whatever it is called. [sleep]

Posted by Christopher White (Member # 1844) on 08-21-2003, 07:03 PM:

That is disappointing to hear Brad. I actually have enjoyed the HBO series this season and had high hopes for the movie. Shia Labeuf (sp?) is really a good actor. I guess he wasn't enough to pull it off, huh? The last Project Greenlight film, "Stolen Summer" was a sleeper. And I don't mean a sleeper hit. I mean I literally fell asleep while watching it. I'll give this one at least one spin on DVD just to see how what was shown being filmed in the series looks in the final film.