My eyes. my eyes. Where are zombies when you need them?
Last night I had a nightmare: I was forced to watch a certain movie again, and when I woke up in a cold sweat, I realized the reason: I had not yet publicably warned the world against this thing, and if I didn't, I was going to attacked by all of you who saw it and as a result turned into a zombie.
This is a warning. If you love L.M. Montgomery, or hate L.M. Montgomery, or regard L.M. Montgomery with general indifference, or are reading this and saying, "Who the flying )(&)(* is L.M. Montgomery," or thinking, "Wow, I could go for some coffee right now," do not, I beg you, do not watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, the third film made by Kevin Sullivan Productions. I'd add, based on the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery, except that this film isn't, in any way.
Some of you may remember that I quite liked the first Kevin Sullivan Anne of Green Gables film (to distinguish it from the many, many other Anne of Green Gables films) which I thought was quite faithful to the book, well filmed and acted, and entertaining. The second film was considerably less faithful to the book's sequels, but more or less followed certain events in the books while making others up entirely and merging things together that shouldn't have been merged. Still, the acting remained pretty good; the characters remained fairly true to the books, and if not up to the standards of the first film, it was at least watchable.
None of this can be applied in the slightest to the third film, which may not only be the single worst "adaptation" of a Montgomery book ever, but may also be literally one of the worst filmed pieces of crap I have seen in a long time. I was actually at points remembering the acting from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians with fondness, since - and I never thought to defend a single part of that film in the slightest - they actually performed with more professionalism and grace.
We know we are in trouble right from the beginning when Diana Barry, that happy farm girl and contented housewife we remember from the books has suddenly and inexplicably been transformed into a wealthy heiress with a troubled marriage (huh?). Things are not improved when Anne and Diana visit Green Gables to find that the house has been allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin. More on this later. This is followed by dialogue so atrocious that it may well keep all of you away from romance for the rest of your life. (I had some chocolate to blunt the pain.) For fairly inexplicable reasons Anne and Gilbert then head to New York, where there is a lot of nonsense about hospitals and a completely irrelevant commentary on the lousy health care services and lack of insurance offered by the United States and how to write a detective novel and a bunch of other stuff. Then I went and did some laundry and answered some e-mail. When I came back somebody was in a bathrobe which was not as happy a thought as you would think, but luckily I had more e-mail to answer, so I did.
When I came back Anne and Gilbert were back in Green Gables planning the wedding during World War I (for readers of Rilla of Ingleside, I know, I know, bear with me) and Anne was saying remarkably stupid and ignorant things about World War I, and Josie Pye, of all people, was telling Anne to go and defend the Empire, and then Diana Barry told her completely unforgettable husband not to go to war, and at about this point I started to shriek. Luckily the dryer came on.
(See? Laundry has its benefits.)
Anyway, sometime after that, Anne and Gilbert and whatever the husband was were in war-torn France, with Anne behaving remarkably idiotically, and then Anne and the whatever he wasn't thinking husband were in London and then Anne took up the pacifist cause and -
Auugh.
Readers of Rilla of Ingleside and Montgomery's diaries will know, and the rest of you are about to know, that Montgomery herself supported the Canadian war effort against Germany in World War I - with horror at the war and at the German actions, but with conviction that fighting the war was the right and just thing to do. As a result, she wrote a book -- Rilla -- in which virtually all characters support the war and work towards victory; the one pacifist character is a despised figure of fun.
Rilla just happens to be Anne's daughter.
It's not the film's only atrocity, and it gets worse - Anne for some reason was in a nun's costume as I hastily fast forwarded through the rest - but I decided that my poor bruised brain couldn't deal with this and the terrible acting, dialogue, historical inaccuracy, the fairly terrible explosions, and the multitudes of other issues. Like the spies. Let's not go there.
It was bad enough for the film to start by conflating portions of Anne's life and Montgomery's (Montgomery's home was allowed to fall into ruin; the fictional Green Gables, on the other hand, is proudly handed over to an heir chosen and trained by Anne and Marilla); it was far worse for the film to completely destroy Montgomery's vision. I have no particular issues with the film being set during the World War I period, although I am distressed to find out that this was done because of costuming (really), but since the film is using characters with names from the Anne books, why not try the radical thought of actually following the themes from the Anne books?
Oh, and for anyone intrigued by the mentions of bathrobes, explosions and nuns - it's an extraordinarily stupid movie. Skip it.
Really, they should have had Anne become a zombie and eat German soldiers and then begin doing a banana dance. It would have been more relevant.
This is a warning. If you love L.M. Montgomery, or hate L.M. Montgomery, or regard L.M. Montgomery with general indifference, or are reading this and saying, "Who the flying )(&)(* is L.M. Montgomery," or thinking, "Wow, I could go for some coffee right now," do not, I beg you, do not watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, the third film made by Kevin Sullivan Productions. I'd add, based on the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery, except that this film isn't, in any way.
Some of you may remember that I quite liked the first Kevin Sullivan Anne of Green Gables film (to distinguish it from the many, many other Anne of Green Gables films) which I thought was quite faithful to the book, well filmed and acted, and entertaining. The second film was considerably less faithful to the book's sequels, but more or less followed certain events in the books while making others up entirely and merging things together that shouldn't have been merged. Still, the acting remained pretty good; the characters remained fairly true to the books, and if not up to the standards of the first film, it was at least watchable.
None of this can be applied in the slightest to the third film, which may not only be the single worst "adaptation" of a Montgomery book ever, but may also be literally one of the worst filmed pieces of crap I have seen in a long time. I was actually at points remembering the acting from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians with fondness, since - and I never thought to defend a single part of that film in the slightest - they actually performed with more professionalism and grace.
We know we are in trouble right from the beginning when Diana Barry, that happy farm girl and contented housewife we remember from the books has suddenly and inexplicably been transformed into a wealthy heiress with a troubled marriage (huh?). Things are not improved when Anne and Diana visit Green Gables to find that the house has been allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin. More on this later. This is followed by dialogue so atrocious that it may well keep all of you away from romance for the rest of your life. (I had some chocolate to blunt the pain.) For fairly inexplicable reasons Anne and Gilbert then head to New York, where there is a lot of nonsense about hospitals and a completely irrelevant commentary on the lousy health care services and lack of insurance offered by the United States and how to write a detective novel and a bunch of other stuff. Then I went and did some laundry and answered some e-mail. When I came back somebody was in a bathrobe which was not as happy a thought as you would think, but luckily I had more e-mail to answer, so I did.
When I came back Anne and Gilbert were back in Green Gables planning the wedding during World War I (for readers of Rilla of Ingleside, I know, I know, bear with me) and Anne was saying remarkably stupid and ignorant things about World War I, and Josie Pye, of all people, was telling Anne to go and defend the Empire, and then Diana Barry told her completely unforgettable husband not to go to war, and at about this point I started to shriek. Luckily the dryer came on.
(See? Laundry has its benefits.)
Anyway, sometime after that, Anne and Gilbert and whatever the husband was were in war-torn France, with Anne behaving remarkably idiotically, and then Anne and the whatever he wasn't thinking husband were in London and then Anne took up the pacifist cause and -
Auugh.
Readers of Rilla of Ingleside and Montgomery's diaries will know, and the rest of you are about to know, that Montgomery herself supported the Canadian war effort against Germany in World War I - with horror at the war and at the German actions, but with conviction that fighting the war was the right and just thing to do. As a result, she wrote a book -- Rilla -- in which virtually all characters support the war and work towards victory; the one pacifist character is a despised figure of fun.
Rilla just happens to be Anne's daughter.
It's not the film's only atrocity, and it gets worse - Anne for some reason was in a nun's costume as I hastily fast forwarded through the rest - but I decided that my poor bruised brain couldn't deal with this and the terrible acting, dialogue, historical inaccuracy, the fairly terrible explosions, and the multitudes of other issues. Like the spies. Let's not go there.
It was bad enough for the film to start by conflating portions of Anne's life and Montgomery's (Montgomery's home was allowed to fall into ruin; the fictional Green Gables, on the other hand, is proudly handed over to an heir chosen and trained by Anne and Marilla); it was far worse for the film to completely destroy Montgomery's vision. I have no particular issues with the film being set during the World War I period, although I am distressed to find out that this was done because of costuming (really), but since the film is using characters with names from the Anne books, why not try the radical thought of actually following the themes from the Anne books?
Oh, and for anyone intrigued by the mentions of bathrobes, explosions and nuns - it's an extraordinarily stupid movie. Skip it.
Really, they should have had Anne become a zombie and eat German soldiers and then begin doing a banana dance. It would have been more relevant.