Cleopatra (1934 Film) Review

Oh boy, another movie people love that I hate. Actually, I'd put it up there with Rear Window and Gladiator as the most overrated film. Look, I do admit, Claudette Colbert did OK, the special effects were great for the time, and Cecil B. DeMille did good for one of his earlier projects, but this is just a bland history lesson I really didn't care about. It barely even has a plot! It's just flashy special effect with about 4 major plot points, and you don't even care about the characters, so why would the major events matter if you don't even care about what happens to these characters? I think the worst part about these characters is they lack any real emotion, and even if they do have an emotion, it doesn't last long. It's just a bland special effects movie, that's it. Sure, the special effects are good, but you got to have a movie to go with it, and this isn't a movie. It's a mess. The story is basically a biography of, who else, Cleopatra. Nothing wrong with that, except it was executed horribly. They didn't develop the characters, they didn't make them likable, and they didn't make them realistic. Also, the editing was all over the place, and the filmmakers obviously thought special effects top story, which is quite false. The acting is just the same. Sure, Colbert did OK as Cleopatra, but everyone else was just boring and uninteresting. Finally, the characters are also not executed well. Nobody had any good lines, nobody had anything interesting to say or do, and that's a real disappointment, because the history of Cleopatra herself is very interesting and worth a read, but when it was translated to film... Oh boy. The first Cleopatra movie is now lost, only about 5 seconds of the film even exist as we now know. The second film, this one, is, like I said, a boring bland mess. The final major Cleopatra movie to host the one word name was the 1963 version, said to be the most expensive movie ever made, well, up until the third Pirates of the Caribbean, but that's beside the point. Even though it was very expensive and starred several big name actors like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the film flopped at the box office, and critics loathed the film. As for me, I just watched the most beloved movie of the 3, and I thought it sucked. Now what hope do I have for this story? Now, it's time for "The Best and Worst of Cleopatra". The best, obviously, is the special effects. Now, I shall give credit where credit is due, these special effects are outstanding. They must have spent a lot of time and money on them, and Cecil B. DeMille helped make the special effects come alive in the environment. The worst has to be the dialogue. I know, there's a lot of things I hate about this film, but when one of the main character says that "He's to manly to hiccup", you can tell the dialogue sucks. Overall, I really do hate this film. It put's special effects before story, without even giving us a unique story to begin with. Not recommended.

1/5