You heard me -- in fact, if I had my way, I'd institute a five-year (at least) ban on all adaptations of "quality" stage plays into movies, as well as ban all major-league theatrical directors and actors from starring in movies. "Six Degrees" was just one too many times I've seen a play that got serious attention from the middlebrow pundits of my fair city turned into a movie that wasted a lot of talent only to prove how shallow and pretentious the original "highly acclaimed" play actually was.
"We're all connected." Gee. And isn't it nice that dubious black kids like the Will Smith character are around to fulfill their life's mission of transforming the lives of bored rich white people like the Stockard Channing character. What does he get in the end? A trip to jail. As for her, she gets a slick fadeout shot courtesy of classy Aussie director Fred Schepisi. Cheap self-laceration for comfortably well-off.
"Six Degrees" joins "Agnes of God," "Children of a Lesser God," "Fool for Love," and assorted other contraptions whose film adaptations merely prove that film has a knack for exposing the creaky workings of "quality" drama for the cheap fakery they really are. Ditto for Channing's "acclaimed" Broadway performance, which simply looks like a lot of scenery chewing over some claptrap dialog when seen on the screen.
Want to waste your time brow-furrowing over the self-important inner lives of a lot of cardboard rich-Manhattan stock characters? Then see "Six Degrees." Otherwise, have a martini and slip in a video of something that wasn't designed for the tasteful upper-middle class suburban theatre tourist -- like maybe a good John Woo flick.
"We're all connected." Gee. And isn't it nice that dubious black kids like the Will Smith character are around to fulfill their life's mission of transforming the lives of bored rich white people like the Stockard Channing character. What does he get in the end? A trip to jail. As for her, she gets a slick fadeout shot courtesy of classy Aussie director Fred Schepisi. Cheap self-laceration for comfortably well-off.
"Six Degrees" joins "Agnes of God," "Children of a Lesser God," "Fool for Love," and assorted other contraptions whose film adaptations merely prove that film has a knack for exposing the creaky workings of "quality" drama for the cheap fakery they really are. Ditto for Channing's "acclaimed" Broadway performance, which simply looks like a lot of scenery chewing over some claptrap dialog when seen on the screen.
Want to waste your time brow-furrowing over the self-important inner lives of a lot of cardboard rich-Manhattan stock characters? Then see "Six Degrees." Otherwise, have a martini and slip in a video of something that wasn't designed for the tasteful upper-middle class suburban theatre tourist -- like maybe a good John Woo flick.