Customer Reviews

Facade [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Facade was a very rare flim i wish they would make more movies like this. The movie is very funny the way they display the actors is just the best i have seen since Gattaca (1997) the plot to this is very smart and funny at times i think this is a must see movie i don't know why this was never in the theaters i think people would have really liked it this is defently worth the money go out and rent it you won't regret it.

This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. It made no sense; it was not funny; the dialog was vulgar nonsense (not that I object to "adult language" when it is appropriate). Don't waste your time or money: too much has been wasted on this POS already.

Recommending this film outright may cost moderate karma and so I must clear the air up front with a warning about emptiness. Everybody feels emptiness, and that includes directors, producers and writers. Emptiness is the motor of this film, it's raison d'etre; to enjoy it, one needs a comfortable relationship with emptiness--not just one's own, one also needs a willingness to indulge the emptiness of others.

If you're smart and post-hip, you'll love this movie, particularly if you live in or have resided in California. In one scene, the dialogue of the actors is drowned out by the drone of a passing jet engine. Marvelous, mind-warbling timing througout, and a cast of actors who all seem to be of the same nervous, half-starved c-list agency. One cannot dismiss the vision of their collective sketchy thinness and lusty smile.

It's Malibu exploitation in the tradition of "Valley of the Dolls"--and without a single bare breast, the movie exudes a wonderful, tight-underwear sexuality.

Rating, 5 of 5 if filing under Cult, Midnite of Wowie, or Hooterfudge.

The first time I saw this movie was a couple of years ago. It was on late at night, on cable, and it was called "Death Valley". I was living with my brother at the time, he was drunk and I was really sleepy (I don't drink) and we were both in the mood to sit thru a crappy movie. Something with a name as cheesy as "Death Valley" seemed like a good candidate, so we gave it a try. It started out like a crappy movie, all right, with a boring and slowly moving plot, and underdeveloped characters that you don't really care about, but then little odd things kept happening. A plane would fly overhead while two characters were having a conversation, totally drowning out what they were saying, and as soon as the plane was gone one character would say, "That was a beautiful story. I wish the whole world could hear it". Or a woman who was smelling flowers in a garden would take a whiff of a tree branch as if it were a flower. Or the fact that the overly dramatic opening scene, a young girl in a trailer park looking at a dead man on the ground and then getting a look of self righteous vengeance, has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. After a while, we started to realize: this movie was a comedy. It started to be a lot of fun, trying to figure out what random silly thing was going to happen next, and by the time the movie hit it's ridiculous end, me and my brother were rolling. We vowed (well, not really, but we did decide) to own this movie.

Time went by, I no longer live with my brother, and for ages I was never able to find out anything about this movie. Finally, a couple months ago, I looked it up on iMDb.com (which is actually a better site then Amazon then finding out information about movies, but then they don't sell them) and got a list of about twenty movies called "Death Valley", ranging from an old low budget horror movie, to "Death Valley: Exploring Nevada's Natural Mystery" or something like that. Somewhere though, in that list was a movie called "Facade", which iMDb mentioned as also being called "Death Valley" but gave no explanation to why the movie might have more then one title (I still don't know). I went to Amazon and looked "Facade" and from the box could see that yeah, it's the same movie. So, I bought it. The only thing that's different is, the blue title screen says "Facade" instead of "Death Valley". It's even in the same font.

So, when the movie came in the mail, I was pretty excited, and kept telling my best friend how funny it was and how we had to watch it together. So he came over, and even though I'd just bought some other really funny movies too, like A Fish Called Wanda and Raising Arizona, we decided to go with Facade. And.... we were extremely disappointed. Like, have you ever watched a movie where you desperately WANT to be amused, so you find yourself overlaughing at things that weren't even all that funny, and then when the movie is over you realized that you still didn't actually laugh all that much? I guess that, when you're expecting a movie to be bad, but then the movie keeps having random weird funny moments, then that's awesome. But if you're expecting a movie to be really funny, and instead you have to sit thru a crappy movie that only has a funny moment about once every seven minutes, and you know that you COULD be watching a comedy that has non-stop funny scenes in it instead, then it's just not a very enjoyable movie watching experience. Also, I remembered the end being really funny, and this time it just wasn't funny at all, and I can't decide if it's because the different titled version of the movie I saw had a slightly different ending (although I really doubt it), or if it's because last time I saw it was at three o'clock in the morning and I was half asleep and so anything would have been funny, or if it's because last time I saw it my brother was pretty smashed and his easily amuseidness was rubbing off on me, or if it's because this time the only reason me and my friend didn't turn it off and watch a better movie is because I remember the end being great, and then we got to the end and I was like "That was it?!".

So, I'm giving this movie two stars instead of one, partly because if you WANT to watch a crappy movie, this movie is actually going to exceed your expectations, and partly because this seems to be one of these movies where everyone who reviews it either loves to praise movies and gives it a five, or loves to bash movies and gives it a one. I had actually wanted to give it a three just to be different but decided it honestly didn't deserve that. I will say though, that the one gentleman who said this movie was sexual without showing a single breast? He must have seen yet a different version then I, because about the funniest scene in the movie involves a woman coming home to find her husband dead in bed with a topless woman.

It is difficult to believe this movie ever got made and it certainly wasn't shown in theaters. At first it was just confusing (audio was sometimes difficult to hear), then it was just silly, and the ending was ridiculous. If this was farce, it failed; if it was satire, it failed; and if it was supposed to be at all serious, all of the participants should immediately sue to remove their names forever from this attempt. Better to rent the worst Anna Nicole Smith movie than this movie.