Callas Forever Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)November 18th, 2004
CALLAS FOREVER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): 1/2
You're going to need a survival guide to make it through CALLAS FOREVER, by the once superb director Franco Zeffirelli (1969's ROMEO AND JULIET). The only way to endure this movie, which is easily the worst picture of the year, is to close your eyes and ears. When you hear singing, carefully uncover your ears only and try to imagine that you are listening to a Maria Callas's CD. Whatever you do, don't look up and don't listen to the cheesy dialog.
If there had been rotten tomatoes in our theater, I am certain the screen would have been blood red by the end of the movie. Although our small audience started off with audible groans, these noises soon gave way to loud laughter at how truly awful this turkey was.
In a pair of the worst performances of their long careers, Fanny Ardant and Jeremy Irons star as a vain diva and her gay manager. As Maria Callas, Ardant overacts with a shameless vengeance. Competing for the worst acting award, Irons acts like he is attempting a bad parody of himself.
The production values are at an equally low level. Ennio Guarnieri's cinematography is so ugly that the washed-out visuals look an old videotape in bad need of restoration. Even the looping is off so that the voice track never quite matches the movement of the actor's lips.
And then there is the dialog. Whoa. "She's in mourning for her voice, for her career and for Onassis," reporter Sarah Keller (Joan Plowright) explains. And later she says, "I'm a journalist. We suck blood because we can't sing, dance or whatever."
Avoid this pathetic picture, which is especially painful if you're an opera buff like me and completely unwatchable for everyone else. It's so horribly campy that it gives word "campy" a bad name.
CALLAS FOREVER runs 1:51. It is not rated but might be PG-13 and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The film opened a couple of years ago in Europe and has been slowing opening around the world ever since. It goes into wide release in the United States on Friday, November 26, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the Camera Cinemas.
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