The Sun Also Rises (1984)

Overrated and overhyped

Good movie but grossly overrated

From my favorite movies..

best movie i've ever seen.

I liked this mini-series. As was previously mentioned, a mini-series is often a better format for a novel than a movie because mini-series aren't restricted to 120 minutes. I thought Jane Seymour was great in this movie. The rest of the cast was merely good. But despite the lack of experience of the young cast, at least their youth made you believe they were only a few years removed from the war. Well, the editors said I have to have 10 lines to get my comment posted. So I also liked Leonard Nemoy in this movie. I like the background music playing in the bars. And the scenery in the movie. Given Hemmingway's sparse prose, this is the sort of detail that doesn't come across in the book, but makes the movie well worth watching.

This is one of my favorite movies on the planet. The movie is set in Paris in the 1920's. I enjoyed how the character's visited various clubs where live Jazz was performed by African Americans. Seeing the Jazz musicians reminded me that in the 1920's African Americans were treated much better in Paris than in the United States. I think Hart Bochner is absolutely gorgeous and plays his role as Jake Barnes very well. I love the wardrobe in this movie, the suits Jake wore and the Chanel dresses that Jane Seymour wore. In this movie I saw glamor, sadness, hopelessness, hope, comedy, and tragedy. As I said before it is one of my favorites I watch it at least twice a year. I give it two thumbs way up!

Some good and some bad compared to the 1957 effort. The story is better told. The movie is basically the latter half of it. (Yes, we do learn what happened to Jake). There's more time in a miniseries to tell a story like this. Jane Seymour, a very talented actress is fine as Lady Brett. Hart Bochner lacks charisma as the lead. It's hard to tell why everybody thinks he's such a dynamic guy. Robert Carradine is a much more impressive Cohen than Mel Ferrer. We learn much more about the character here. The actors are all much younger, (or at least younger-looking) than their 1957 counterparts. It gives the impression of kids playing "grown-up". It's hard to compare Bochner to Tyrone Power, Zeljko Ivanek to Eddie Albert, Ian Charleston to Errol Flynn, etc. because the 1957 cast consisted of older, more accomplished performers. And yet, since this takes place in the 1920's, the characters would have been more the age of the performers in the mini-series. The 1957 cast was almost old enough to have fought in World War I themselves.

As TV movies go, this version of "The Sun Also Rises" isn't the worst. However, the liberties taken with Hemingway's work were both unnecessary and destructive. Oh, did I mention the acting is terrible? Jane Seymour, as Brett, tries her very hardest, and it shows, but it's not enough: she's just not talented enough to slog through dialogue this bad and retain a modicum of grace (and let's not talk much about the "period" costumes, OK? Not every woman of the 20's dressed like an Arabian vampire with black turbans, alright?). Hart Bochner, on the other hand, is in every way jarringly unconvincing. He's too young, too matinee-idol-ish, to portray depressed, self-destructive, castrated veteran Jake Barnes. I admit to having missed the beginning, as I saw it on TV - did they cut out the fact that he was wounded that way? Omissions like that, changes to such a well-known work of great literature as "Sun," would seem to be heretical, but once you've heard Hemingway's subtle and sparing dialogue dismissed for more obvious tripe, and the few great, memorable lines from the book - "isn't it pretty to think so?" "Send a woman off with one man . . . and sign the wire 'with love.'" - hopelessly destroyed by Bochner's wooden speech and expressions, nothing will ever seem shocking again. Entire lifelines are altered to further banish subtlety, most shockingly Bill's (didn't love his sitcom acting style either), but also to a small extent Cohn's, Romero's, and even Jake's.Not a complete waste of time, but if you love the book, then each mistake, omission, alteration, and Bochner-ed line will make you cringe. Just read the novel, and forget this.