Sean Penn Bomb--By Rachelle Younglai, 9/15/06
TORONTO (Reuters) - Some of the biggest names in Hollywood had their egos bruised at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
Critics and film buffs at the festival, which ends on Saturday with awards for audience favorites, took special aim at Steven Zaillian's "All the King's Men," starring Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet.
They were also disappointed in the most controversial film at the festival, "Death of a President," a fictional documentary about the assassination of President George W. Bush.
"The last few years at the festival, we saw massive bombs like 'Elizabethtown' and 'The Human Stain,' movies that came in with glowing expectations and just bombed," said Tom O'Neil, show business awards columnist for The Envelope.com.
"But 'All the King's Men' was nuclear, because it dared to remake an Oscar best picture winner of 1949 and it had a galaxy of superstars performing very badly," he added.
Penn plays Willie Stark, an idealistic politician who rises from the poverty of the Great Depression to become governor of Louisiana, but then gives in to corruption.
Todd McCarthy, a critic for Daily Variety, called the film "overstuffed and fatally miscast," and said in a review that the movie "never comes to life." |
