Poldark (1996)

the audience applauded

Strong and Moving!

i must have seen a different film!!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I really looked forward to seeing this movie, but what disappointment and a waste of time it turned out to be.Of all the feature films which follow a great series, this has got to be one of the worst I've ever seen. It is so disjointed as to be utterly tedious, as is the plot. Miscasting abounds, and both acting and dialogue are dead and lifeless as is the direction. There is very little, indeed none, of the fire of the original characters on display here. In short it is a complete disaster.Winston Graham is a wonderful writer, ergo I can't imagine or believe that he wrote the screenplay for this drivel.

I wish this sequel had been with the original cast, however given the time span involved from when it was originally shown, the actors would probably have been difficult to re-assemble. The acting in the new version was however excellent, my only complaint was that it was left hanging on every story line. How do you go about purchasing the rest of this series, surely it was just not left up in the air like this, in short this being such an all time beloved series, what were the distributors of the DVD's thinking. The actors, scenery, costumes and settings were outstanding, wish they had gone ahead with thoughts of turning this into a spectacular movie. So many books still to cover and with such a wide viewing audience you would think it would be a certain hit at the box office would be fun to try casting the movie. Any thoughts out there on who should be cast in the lead roles?

The old Poldark afficiandos regard this as a blasphemy. But I've noticed some reviews on Amazon that are a little less anorak and a little more objective, some of which are fairly favourable, one or two very much so. On its own terms it does have flaws. The book on which it is based is more an old man's ruminations than a story and any adaptation was going to run into problems. That said, the cast is great (the much-missed originals might well have floundered with their mannered performances, okay in the seventies but ... well ...), the locations and design are quite stunning and the story sort of lopes along a bit erratically but there are some good scenes. Laxton directs with finesse, in my view, and the script is more elegantly poetic than I think its audience was expecting. It does end rather suddenly but this was probably meant as a pilot to a series. On reflection, the stories are resolved, in a way, but leave something to the viewer to work out. Probably far too ambitious considering its natural constituency and in the end, possibly a compromise between something new and pandering to the old. It couldn't win. But it's actually a good piece of work. Congratulations all round.

This very poorly done production jumps from scene to scene and appears like many parts must have been cut out to make it fit into the scheduled time(sound familiar?). Then, it ends abruptly, leaving all the story lines up in the air. It looks like this might have been parts of a mini series that was never completed. Don't expect this to compare with the original Poldark series. A real waste of some very good talent.