The Talented Mr. Ripley Review

by "Indra Moeljadi" (killed AT pulp-fiction DOT com)
March 10th, 2000
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Everybody has one talent. Ronaldo's talent is scoring goals. Monica Lewinsky's talent is smoking cigars. Jay Leno's is making jokes about Monica Lewinsky's talent. Mine talent is unclear yet, it's somewhere between making things to break up suddenly or writing these reviews. Tom Ripley's talent is impersonating people.

Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) was just a regular guy. A toilet-cleaner, who loves to play piano. But a Princeton badge on your borrowed jacket can do many things. For Tom, it opened a way to go to Italy to find Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) and to make him go back to New York, back to his parents.
So there he goes to Italy. In Italy, he's not the Tom Ripley he used to be. He's just someone else. Most of the time he's Dickie Greenleaf. Then things happen. Tom's talent seems to obsess him, and he goes great ways to fulfill his obsession. All that to be a fake somebody than to be a real nobody. What's wrong with this guy? Girls will love him, because Matt Damon is playing that role, and he can play piano. I still wish I could play the piano.

The movie is very slow. And the whole theme is basically the same as Single White Female. But in SWF it's set in an apartment, while this movie is set all over Italy in the late 50s. I got bored watching this movie. It was too slow, too long, too obvious (you could know what would happen next), too Matt Damon, and not enough chicks (just Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett). To tell you the truth, I'm still wondering why this movie could be nominated for an Oscar. It would never get my vote.

Well, I don't know. I'm not a real movie critic. I'm just writing what I think. And I know most of the people would disagree with what I'm saying here, but maybe that is my talent.

Indra Moeljadi
just like every other person, would love to be a fake somebody

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