Home :: DVD :: Romantic Comedies  

Classics
Contemporary
General
Benny & Joon

Benny & Joon

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $11.21
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 .. 10 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Awful
Review: An art-nazi tour de force. Hideously cute. Avoid it at all costs unless you enjoy saccharine humor and sensitivity. I guess it could be useful in stirring the souls of the emotionally dead into feeling a new form of nothing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unbelievable performance by Johnny Depp!
Review: I have to tell you that I have never been a Johnny Depp fan but recently have gotten into his movies. What an underrated actor. The movie was so-so but it's worth it just to see the performance that Johnny Depp gives. He acts with his whole being. You can see the humor in his eyes, the way he moves. He is very impressive in this role. As for the movie, good story line but could have been developed better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AWESOME!
Review: This movie is very touching, yet funny. It's a love story b/w Benny and Joon...and of course being it a movie...Stuff happens : ) It's a very good movie, I highly recommend it. The actors do a very awesome job in playing their characters!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Johnny Depp shines in this touching romance
Review: "Benny and Joon" is the moving story of Benny (Aidan Quinn) and Joon (Mary Stuart Mastersen) Pearl, a brother and sister who have lived together for twelve years since their parents died. Joon suffers from mental illness, though throughout the movie there are scenes where she is profoundly sane.
Perhaps the most moving and surprising performance is Johnny Depp, whose dyslexic and extremely talented Sam brings light to Benny and Joon's sad life. Depp is amazing as he performs his Charlie Chaplinesque slapstick, eyes twinkling. But what makes his character even more enduring is that he loves Joon no matter how sick she may be. He wants her to get better and be free from the watchful eye of her over-protective brother.

Depp's Sam proves that laughter is the best medicine. Watching this film will make you fall in love (or in my case, more in love!) with Johnny and it is a must-buy for anyone who enjoys pure romantic comedy at its lovliest.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the eyes do all the acting
Review: johnny depp is truly amazing in his portrale of sam in benny and joon. if you just watch his eyes throughout the movie it's amazing the effect you get. sam's buster keaton acts are fantastic and i love the clothes he wears. he always is in some kind of suit. he is extremly cute in this movie and his acting in phenomonal. so if u wanna see the cutest look for johnny depp, amazing acting, and some really good laughs, see benny and joon, you won't be dissapointed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Raisins are really humiliated grapes
Review: This is a very sweet movie. Benny (Aidan Quinn) lives with his sister Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), who is mentally ill. One day Joon loses at poker, and *surprise* wins Sam (Johnny Depp) a quirky wanderer who changes both of their lives forever. Great for those who have a taste for bizarre humor, and also wonderful for those obsessive Depp fans. This movie, all though it will make you laugh out loud, will also touch you. And the music is a lot of fun!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: best depp film
Review: best depp film. you feel for the quirky Sam. He loves everyone and everthing. pure and innocent like a child. He helps everyone around him see nothing but love.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: i'm a Johnny Depp fan
Review: This movie is really sweet amd a little quirky. Shake in some Chaplin style comedy and you have a winning match. Wow. I can't like this movie more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: So Good
Review: I am a huge Johnny Depp fan. I loved him in Pirates of the Caribbean and Sleepy Hollow; but I like his older movies just as much (if not more).

Benny and Joon could be called 'heart-warming' I suppose. I just think Johnny Depp did an excellent job (he was excellent at being extremely attractive, too). I love his obscure roles he played in the early 90s. I also like his bigger roles.

I also recommend Edward Scissorhands, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, and, you know, all the other movies he's ever been in.

Cheerio.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Some cultures are defined by their relationships to cheese.
Review: Benny and Joon (Jeremiah Chechik, 1993)

Benny and Joon is, quite simply, an anomaly. Chechik's directorial efforts, both before (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Nuff said.) and after (The Avengers. The American remake of Diabolique. Nuff said.) have been worth of nothing but the cutting-room floor. Aidan Quinn (Songcatcher, Plainsong, many other movies with "song" in the title) was in the midst of a decade-long career slump, and Mary Stuart Masterson (Fried Green Tomatoes) was at the very end of her Hollywood viability. So why is it, exactly, Benny and Joon works?

Work it does, and very well. The main reason is a couple of extremely risky casting decisions. Johnny Depp was still a cult figure (and he plays a role that fits in very well with his early nineties persona), and Julianne Moore was still "that woman who used to be on a soap opera." Minor roles were filled with rising stars like Oliver Platt (Lake Placid), CCH Pounder (ER), and William H. Macy (Pleasantville), all of whom were still in the character-actor stage at the time. In fact, aside from Masterson, the only really recognizable face in the film is Dan Hedaya, one of Benny's poker buddies. The casting folks took risks, and those risks panned out.

Benny (Quinn) and Joon (Masterson), a brother and sister, have been living on their own since the deaths of their parents twelve years previous. Benny owns an auto body shop; Joon is a professional nutcase. Benny is involved in a weekly poker game with, to say the least, the most interesting stakes of any filmed card game in history. One week, while Benny and Eric (Platt) are outside talking, Joon sits in for him. One of the things she wins in the pot: Sam (Depp). What is wrong with Sam is never fully explained, though severe dyslexia plays a part in it (it wouldn't be out of line to suggest that perhaps Sam is mildly autistic). Sam is obsessed with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and pretty much every move he makes in the film is modeled on one or the other of them. To say any more in a review would spoil the plot.

The script is perfect (odd that scriptwriter Barry Berman has only managed to produce two other scripts deemed filmable by Hollywood, both were disasters), the acting fantastic. How, I don't know. But Depp turns in a solid performance, as does most everyone else (Julianne Moore didn't really have enough of a part to work with). Masterson shines.

Definitely worth watching. *** ½


<< 1 2 3 4 5 .. 10 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates