 | |
List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 33161
Released: February 15, 2000 |
| Our Price: $4.92 |
| Used Price: $5.95 |
|
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Hot young stars Claire Danes (LES MISERABLES, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO + JULIET) and Jude Law (COLD MOUNTAIN, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) heat up the screen in this passionate story about fitting in ... and falling in love! Head-turning cute but painfully shy and self-conscious, Daisy (Danes) feels like a complete outsider at her stuffy New York prep school. So when she catches the eye of the coolest guy in school, Daisy is totally psyched ... but afraid that opening up too much might blow it for her. Also starring legendary Jeanne Moreau (EVER AFTER, THE SUMMER HOUSE), I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU NOT is the film that proves dreams worth having are definitely worth wishing for!
Description of I Love You, I Love You Not:
Sadly, playwright Wendy Kesselman's sensitive story about anti-Semitism is rather forcibly directed by former casting agent Billy Hopkins, as if this were not so much a feature film as a glorified after-school special for TV. Despite that, the film largely works on the strength of its two leads: Claire Danes, who plays a young Jewish girl identified as such at her private, coed high school, and Jeanne Moreau, who plays her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. As Danes's character is increasingly shunned and becomes a target of bigotry and vandalism, Moreau's loving grandma helps keep her from going over the edge.
The film also concerns the high price of being different on many fronts. Not only is Danes's young heroine dissimilar to her friends because she's Jewish, she's also intense, keenly intelligent, and a poetry lover. When she falls for a callow stud at school who worries about the opinion of his idiotic friends, she feels for the first time the pain of being rejected for being who she is. Moreau is magnificent as the lifelong survivor who knows when to give her granddaughter refuge and when to push her into the real world to find her own footing. Danes's performance reads like a map of increasingly exciting things to come in her career; there are moments in this film when you look at her and can see the consummate actress in her future. --Tom Keogh
I Love You, I Love You Not Reviews:
JUDE LAW..YUMMI...WEIRD STORY 
2007-03-29 - This was the 1st movie i saw with Jude Law and i fell in love with him right away. I think this story is very sweet at the begining but it is a little bit weird and confusing.. u gotta keep up with Claire Danes's character which is a weirdo girl. I bought this dvd a while ago but what i didnt like is that there is a part that they edited, where they are in the park and they start kissing and he is about to take off her top and she says "no, just wait..wait for me" something like that. THEY TOOK THAT OFF! man!
My So-Called Holocaust Life 
2006-02-12 - I am so angry at this film that it will be very difficult for me to contain the harsh words that are ready to spew from my mouth. This will not be a review for young readers. I Love You, I Love You Not was an atrocity from beginning to end. From both the disgustingly poor editing, to the sloppy acting, all the way to the horrendous themes that seemed to plot two random events together this film screamed "After School Special". In fact, now that I think about it, "After School Special" would be too delicate of a summary, it instead felt like a eager undergraduate film student attempting to be smart by attempting to poorly summarize the Holocaust with the turmoil of being a high school student. Hopefully the professor of this assignment saw the project and properly gave it the "F" it deserved. Hollywood completely outdid itself on this doozy of a film. I am surprised that the Jewish community didn't find this film offensive in the way that it trivialized the events of the Holocaust and compared them to the social troubles of a High School girl. I was upset by this occurrence, and I am not even Jewish. After this short film viewing, I felt dirty, upset by the Hollywood community, and ready to shout obscenities at everyone involved with this project. I Love You, I Love You Not was just another Hollywood attempt to monopolize on Claire Danes' My So-Called Life popularity while trying to be overly symbolic by involving the Holocaust. Is anyone else as sick as I am about this disgraceful marriage?
I do not understand at all what director Billy Hopkins was attempting to convey with this film. The themes were muddled in a slew of choppy editing and horrid flashbacks that left my mind in a confused knot. In one instance we had Danes unwilling to spend time with her grandmother, while in the next instance she was opening up everything in her life to her, while in the next she was making out with the mirror, and suddenly in the next she was asking Moreau to tell her a nightmarish bedtime story involving Robert Sean Leonard. Wouldn't that give anyone nightmares? It did give everyone nightmares and preempts our next step into the randomly anti-Semitic High School in which Danes attends. Unlike other films that use the Holocaust to show the injustices of the world, like in School Ties, this film randomly interjects the anti-Semitic moments near the end as if only to help strengthen already dead climax. Like nearly every scene in this film, the supposed "high-points" come and go nearly as quickly as modern fashion, leaving the viewer with nothing at all. I walked away of this film with an embarrassed look. While there may have been some attempt at meaning behind Billy Hopkins' camera, what eventually was released was a childish attempt to combine the trivial life of a High School girl to that of the monumental disaster known as the Holocaust. Could you put these two together? A great director probably could, but Hopkins' could not. All that it seems that he wants to create are meaningless dramatic plot-holes coupled with beautiful people.
Which, ultimately, leads me to the acting. While "abhorrent" would be a light word summarizing the purely absent acting of Danes, Law, and Van Der Beek, it is the only one that I could think of. Danes, using the same character structure from My So-Called Life in this film, could not find her way out of a paper bag if she tried. I could hear Hopkins in the background saying, "Give me more Angela Chase, I hired you for Angela, I WANT ANGELA". Her character is all over the place, manic depressive in one moment, happy the next, chaotic throughout, pitiful entirely. I loved the fact that she was a "reader", but one of the most ignorant characters created. You would think that with all the books she would have learned from them, sputtering quotes throughout the film, but alas, that never happened. Again, we were left with only Angela Chase. Award winning Jeanne Moreau bounces of the non-existent acting of Danes by providing her own character which does not fit into this film. Obviously disturbed by her time in Auschwitz, Moreau never develops this. She allows Danes to walk all over her, creating a weak grandmother and a needy, spoiled granddaughter. Throw in "boy-toy" Jude Law only for looks (because his character was as transparent as Saran wrap) and you have the worst cast in cinema. Nobody did any work with their characters, but instead walked around the set happy to be earning some, if any, money for their roles. I am surprised that both Danes and Law were able to pull themselves out of the I Love You, I Love You Not rut.
Overall, this was a confusing film that was only proven worse by torrential acting, very ill cinematography, a hasty Hollywood story (very obviously created by the infamous recycle machine), and by combining a trivial moment in a teenager's life with the historical hardships of the Holocaust. That would be similar to me trivializing the horrible deaths on the beaches of Omaha with me not getting a date for my Senior Prom. That just is painful to hear and visually see. The acting was non-existent, but obvious ploys to get a younger audience to attempt to connect with the story. The direction was nauseating. The constant flicking between present day and past stories kept me dizzied for days afterwards. Then, there was the uproarious casting of Robert Sean Leonard, I couldn't help but laugh when I continually saw him on screen. The only actor worth mentioning in this film was Julia Stiles, but that was because she kept her mouth shut. This was a disaster from the beginning and should be forgotten by all!
Grade: * out of *****
Strong Women, trying times 
2005-05-09 - How could I resist seeing what the pairing of Claire Danes and Jude Law would be like? Honestly, I would love to see them together again. Jude Law is actually not the most important character in this, the relationship that is the glue of this movie is between the Claire Danes character and her grandmother, played by Jeanne Moreau. They have a great sisterly bond, occasionaly one of them has to play the adult, but often it is just play. It was really touching to see.
Jude Law is the 'it' boy while Danes is the wallflower he is intrigued by but dissapointed to learn that no matter how charming he is, she is always going to be herself. Her intense, poetic and mysteriously sad self.
The back of the box really gave no indication of what this story was really about, which was kind of nice, I might not have picked it up, but it was compeltely missleading!
I really enjoyed this movie, and the way it interplayed Daisy's life with her grandmother's experience with being a German Jew during Hitler's reign. I wouldn't call it sad, but a very contemplative movie.
It would have been nice to see Law's character come to some sort of enlightenment, but all in all it was satisfying, because he isn't the focus. The focus is between these two strong, surviving women, and their relationship stands the test of the movie. Which I applaud completely.
Interesting in idea, but fell through slightly...
2004-04-03 - I liked this movie...alot, but it could have been alot better. Claire Danes, Jeanne Moreau, and Jude Law did excellent jobs. The problem wasn't in the acting, and wasn't really in the dialogue. the problem was taht at times it was hard to follow and some parts felt unresolved or unexplained. It would have been nice to see more of the relationship between Law's and Danes' characters. It also would have been nicer to have just a bit more on Law's character on his own and why he went with Danes' character. The dreams and quasi-flashbacks were also very hard to follow. Maybe if the movie had been longer and given a cleaner, but not necassarily perfect feel it would have been better. the anti-semetic letters she get and the reason for the break-up isn't very clear and if we had been able to see more than a few temporary moments of her relationship with her parents then we'd get a bigger picture of the character's problems.
I'd suggest it to anyone who is a fan of Claire Danes or Jude Law. Or just a good movie.
Blah
2004-03-22 - I really hated this... it wasn't even worth my time to TiVo it. It was completely unrelatable and just dragged. It rubbed me the wrong way.
