Arsène Lupin (2004)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

First of all, the 2 hours movie is enjoyable,, at least until the last hour.. Things start good ,, the build up,, the story line,, the characters.. all good. Then they stat the main adventure of the "treasure" thing! . Anyhow it keeps getting better.. then... then... all of the sudden, things change... and that's the second half. In the second half you don't know what the hell is happening! he loves this, then sleeps with that and loves her, she betray him, then not, then yes, then back to the first, then his father, then the treasure, then the woman, then the father, the witch, the crosses.. OMG .. it just kept going on and on!!! Every time you think this is the final scene they start a new thing, so there is a moment where you just don't give a damn about the story you just watch a twist after twist. No honestly, you will think the movie ended several time then!! Voilaaa.. it's on again!! That was crazy, enjoyable, fun yea.. but too much that I feel I got old now!!

I saw this movie in Chinese by mistake. I don't speak Chinese. I could follow the story almost perfectly. This gives some indication how infantile this movie is. So if it fails in America, Mr. America - Bashing - As - Universal - Apology - For - Horrible - French - Movie - Disaster, it's not because we can't follow it. It's because we can follow it all too well. This is especially sad, since the actors have been very good elsewhere. Here the best that can be said about their performances is that their costumes looked nice. Even that dude with the metal headplate looked stylish. Having seen this film, I'm considering having one bolted on to quell the agony. Besides, the French invented fashion, as everyone knows.

This movie has one of the worst adapted scripts I've ever seen. To be honest, I've never read any original novel, so maybe it would be easier to follow the movie for me if I did, but that can't be the objective of any film. The movie has a lot of things going for it. It has nice costumes and sets and it really delivers this 1900 atmosphere. Plus, the idea of a gentleman thief could really be promising. But oh my god, how bad is that script...It looks like they had three scripts from which they chose whatever they thought to be the best, leading to a series of events that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. All the time during this movie you keep asking yourself: How did they get there? What are they doing there? Why are they doing what they are doing?There is just too much going on. There are two girls, two villains (actually there are three, as it turns out that Beaumagnan isn't really working for the royalists) and there are at least three endings of which the final one is the most disappointing of them all. So as you can imagine, there is no time to properly introduce all the characters, let alone develop the different strands of the plot.

We laughed in the wrong places, I briefly fell asleep in the middle of the film, and then we left before the end. What can I say? A boring, insane mess. I did not care about any of the characters, probably since the back story was so limited and rushed. I did not care what happened in the inane plot, or who was good or bad. I also didn't think the visuals were all that stunning. The film did look expensive, but big deal. The same thing happened in every scene (that I was awake to watch): Arsene came bursting into a room/train/masked ball/etc. Revolvers blazed. Kirstin Scott Thomas ran around, and/or stabbed someone in the neck. Arsene's girlfriend screamed "Ar-SENE!" A group of identical-looking old guys with mustaches ran around. Someone stole a golden cross. Repeat 1,000 times. Zzzzzzzzzz!