KEX'S AMAZING WORLD
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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only an error to be exposed. -- H.L. Menken

The Rating System

Kex Liked It:
It Sucked:
It Really Sucked:
It Sucked as bad as Eyes Wide Shut:

It Sucked badly enough to bring the world to the brink of apocalypse:

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102 Dalmations
Last Week: 102 Dalmations:

There is one thing you can always count on from Disney Studios: You just know that they would never shamelessly stoop to such crass, money-grabbing exploitation that they would go out and simply make the same successful movie twice, or even three times. Yes, its true that they did turn the successful cartoon, 101 Dalmations into a live action movie without changing it much, but that doesn't really count. They would never even consider taking a movie like that, adding one more Dalmation to the title, and simply making the same movie again.

So we just know that 102 Dalmations is going to be much different than the original (well, original if you don't count the cartoon) movie, and it is. In 102 Dalmations, we see Cruella DeVil (Glen Close) in prison, where she is being subjected to a Pavlovian deconditioning experiment to cure her of her hatred for puppies. Never being prone to vulgar stereotyping, Disney presents us with a uniquely portrayed scientist, middle aged, glasses, heavy German accent, goutee and a lab coat.

Cruella is paroled thanks to the success of the experiment, but the scientist soon discovers that the effects of his work are only temporary. Cruella, who is now living the life of a philanthropist, suddenly reverts to her old ways and begins yearning for a perfect dalmation fur. In an entirely original plot twist, Cruella goes on a puppy napping rampage, and exports the unlucky Dalmations to Paris. There they await the fate of being turned into a coat by her furrier (Gerard Depardieu).

Cruella succeeds in turning the puppies into a coat and stuns the world with her magnificent creation. The Global effects are astonishing: In the United States, the show of splendor causes a mass surrender to the Republican ideal, thus George Bush jr. is swept into the White House leading a Republican controlled congress. The EPA is quickly gutted, abortion outlawed and USDA standards are abolished, leaving a nation that is polluted and intolerant, but shamelessly in love with the achievement of excessive wealth.

In Russia, the masses who are already strained by the imposition of a capitalistic system that isn't working destroy the government in a backlash against capitalistic excesses. A socialist government is reinstituted and the old U.S.S.R. is reborn. Immediately the nuclear arms race begins anew, and a trillion dollars a year are spent by the superpowers on nuclear and conventional arms they can never use. The insanity bankrupts both the U.S and the U.S.S.R., leading to economic chaos and the end of civilization as we know it: All over a stupid coat. That is some Disney movie.

Unfortunately, that isn't what happens. The first part about the prison and the scientist is true, as is the part about Cruella's relapse. But when she goes on her puppy napping spree, the dalmations escape. Pissed off that the humans ever released Cruella upon the world again, the 102 dalmations go on a looting and rioting rampage throughout London. Ankles are bitten, cars are chased, tens of thousands of cats are treed and supermarkets are raided.

Soon other dogs in London begin joining the canine revolution, and social order in the United Kingdom collapses as dogs rule the streets. A worldwide dog rebellion follows and humans are hunted down by angry packs. Civilization collapses entirely, and the dogs rule the world.

The movie is surprisingly graphic for a children's film, as we see human limbs torn asunder, decapitations by vicious chomps of canine jaws, and young children being ripped open by doggy claws. Its just not what you would expect from a Disney movie....okay, its also not what you get.

Instead, we see 102 dalmations set sail aboard a magnificent ocean liner under the command of their brave captain, Cruella DeVil. We mostly follow the exploits of two of the dalmations, one poor and living off the streets, the other in the care of a fabulously wealthy family. The two meet and fall in love, much to the consternation of the rich dog's owners. Alas the romance is ill-fated, as the suicidally insane Captain Cruella steers the ship into an ice berg and it sinks. The rich dalmation is the only survivor. Okay, none of this happens either.

But what if one of the dalmations comes across an old house where she meets this other dalmation who has scissors for claws....nah......

Okay...Cruella is in prison. The stereotypical German scientist conditions her to love puppies, but the effects are only temporary. Cruella reverts to her evil ways, and kidnaps puppies. The puppies are sent to Paris, they eventually escape and get revenge on Cruella...the end. Its really the same movie as 101 Dalmations. The kids will probably enjoy it, and if you can get past the opening rap-style theme song which had me giving some consideration to ramming nails into my ears with a hammer, the movie is essentially tolerable.

Probably my biggest objection to the film was that for a movie ostensibly about dalmations, the feature animals didn't really spend all that much time on the screen. That is probably just as well, since perhaps the pounds and rescue shelters won't end up being filled with owner-abandoned dalmations six months from now. Here is to hoping that Disney never makes a cute pet film entitled 103 King Cobras.


Last Week: Ocean's 11:

I know I said that I wasn't going to see this movie, but what choice did I really have? The only other new options were a couple of art-house films that got panned by reviewers who generally never see and independent film they don't like. So Ocean's 11 won more or less by default. The really disturbing thing here is that we are now a week into December, with only 3 weeks left in the Oscar race, and there still aren't 5 deserving films to nominate. Heckfire, I'm not sure there is one yet.

Ocean's 11 is about a newly released convict, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), who decides to rob 3 casinos in Las Vegas. He really isn't all that interested in the money. Mostly he just wants some revenge against the casino's owner, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Benedict is sort of a ruthless S.O.B., but that isn't what is motivating Ocean. He is mostly upset that Benedict is boinking his ex-wife, portrayed by Julia Roberts.

At this point I think it might be fair to note that Ocean should probably be thrilled somebody has relieved him of the necessity of supporting his ex's habits. She has the largest and most expensive wardrobe I've seen in awhile, which I think she utilizes to distract everyone from noticing her big mouth. No, I'm not saying that in the conventional sense that Roberts' character chatters a lot. She has a big mouth. No, a gigantic mouth. That sucker is enormous.

At one point during the movie she yawned, and I thought for a moment that the theater had screwed up and replaced a reel from the movie with a travel log of Carlsbad Caverns. She lifted a wine glass to take a sip from it during one memorable scene, and the damned glass disappeared. That women could French kiss a moose. So, she tries to distract everyone with expensive clothes. There was also a curious moment during which she somehow changed dresses in mid-scene, so she is apparently pretty obsessed with maintaining the distraction.

Meanwhile, Danny Ocean hires pretty much everyone in America who isn't Benedict or his ex-wife to get involved in the plot to rob the casinos. So effectively, if the plot is successful, 280 million Americans will split a take of $163 million from the 3 casinos. In case you are wondering, and don't want to go to the effort to figure it out for yourself, that works out to a lucrative 58 cents per person. Hey, that is about 58 cents more than I got from that George W. Bush "tax rebate."

Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. Actually, Ocean hires 11 people to help him. Among them are Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and a handful of other young, aspiring actors who have been doing a lot of bit roles lately. The studio also managed to raid the old actors home and find Elliot Gould and Carl Reiner, who's combined age barely is less than that of the 1000 year-old man (Mel Brooks) whom Reiner became famous interviewing during the course of lame comedy skits about 3 centuries ago.

Just in case you live in a cave like Osama Bin Laden and don't know, Ocean's 11 is a remake of a movie done most of 40 years ago. It featured the original rat pack, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickenson and Jerry Mathers as "The Beaver." Some of you who are regular readers are probably expecting me to break into a dissertation now about remaking old movies, and you are absolutely correct.

I've covered this before, but apparently the folks out in Hollyweird weren't listening. Any director who remakes a good old movie is a moron. Why? Because its the absolute height of self-indulgent ego masturbation to believe that you can improve on something that people still fondly remember a few decades later. In other words, Dickens already wrote A Tale Of Two Cities and it was good enough for most of humanity. A few extra car wrecks and a dose or two of full frontal nudity won't improve it any.

Similarly, remaking a bad old movie equally demonstrates a director's lack of functioning grey matter. A bad movie is always bad for a reason, and any director who attempts to remake it will most likely end up making the same fundamental mistake, as well as tossing in a few new ones. Its essentially an incontrovertable rule of the universe that a movie that sucks the first time its made will suck every time someone tries to remake it. A case in point is A Star Is Born. Could anyone actually sane believe that Kris Kristopherson and Barbara Streisand could actually succeed where the chick from The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland failed?

WARNING! WARNING! PLOT SPOILER AHEAD! This is the third damned movie I've run across in the last few month's where I am actually supposed to enjoy watching a group of slimy people steal from somebody else. Yeah, that is going to happen. I think Danny Ocean and his whole crew should be used to train the Marines what should be done when they finally spot Bin Laden. Yes, Benedict was kind of a slime ball, but for the most part, it wasn't his money they were stealing. They were stealing money that supports 3 really cool Las Vegas casinos, and I might want to go back there someday. I really do need to find my sunglasses.

Ocean's group devises a plan to rob the casinos, which ultimately works. What makes this film seem wholly slab dash idiotic is the simple fact that the plan they devised not only would have cost more loot than they successfully got away with, but would have bankrupted any 11 of 64 third world nations had they jointly attempted to carry it out. If Ocean really would have had enough money just to bring this thing off, he'd never have needed to rob the casinos in the first place. And he probably could have easily attracted a female companion with a mouth that wasn't large enough to swallow an aircraft carrier.

By the way, I'm thinking that George Clooney is trying to avoid being typecast as Batman, but his last three films portraying convicts is a little over the top. True, at least Oh Brother Where Art Thou? may have given us an indication of the roots of ZZ Top, but geez George, only about 360 people saw Batman and Robin anyway.


Last Week: A Kex Classic Review: Gosford Park:

Among the many benefits, our new home has the attractive feature of being strategically located about 5 blocks from a movie theater. If the many other benefits hadn't sold me, that one alone could have turned the trick. This week, one drive by the jam-packed parking lot of the theater erased any little desire I still had to brave the crowds to face Harry Potter. Besides, its not like anyone is going to make a decision on whether or not to see Harry based on what I have to say about it.

It also struck me that even if there had been an attractive alternative released this week (there decidedly was not), I'd have still had to stand in line for an hour just to get tickets to see whatever new release was cast to its cinematic death in competition with the boy wizard. So for the second straight week, it was off to the rental store.

We chose Gosford Park, Robert Altman's critically acclaimed film that was released late last year. The phrase "critically acclaimed" generally means "Roger Ebert like it, but everyone else is going to think it sucks canal water." Unfortunately, this movie followed the standard. Just why it received such remarkable acclaim entirely escapes me.

Normally a British film gives me enormous opportunities to take cheap, below the belt shots at our cousins across the great pond. Regular readers of this page will note that I have engaged in that type of thing before, although its been a long time since I've explored just why Prince Phillip is the single most useless human being on the planet. I haven't even made a crack about Charlie's ears in a couple of years. There is a good reason for all of that.

You see, the argument is really over, and we have lost. True, slimy and tawdry as the British Royal family is, our own platform for scathing commentary evaporated like a Tonya Harding marriage the day we proved that even a retarded chimpanzee could grow up to be President of the United States. Believe me, my loyal readers over in Great Britian aren't letting me forget it either. Worse still, most Brits can identify our retarded chimp by name. Here is a quick quiz for Kex readers:

1. Name the current Prime Minister of Britian.
2. Name the current Prime Minister of Canada.
3. Name the current Prime Minister of Australia.
4. Name the current Prime Minister of India.

Chances are most of you got about one of these right, which means you scored exactly as well as the current President during the campaigns in 2000 (really).

Its not too hard to describe Gosford Park. Boring as hell. If you want to know how long 2 hours and 18 minutes can be, go out and rent this film. As close as I can tell, it was little more than a make work project for every actor with a British accent that Robert Altman could dig up. Then they divided the group into two teams: Those who would portray servants, and those who would protray aristocracy.

It'd have been a lot more interesting to watch the same group stage a really tedious cricket match, but we got a film instead. For about 60 interminable minutes, virtually nothing happens except a really painful blabfest amongst the actors with barely decipherable British accents. Then, one of the characters gets murdered. We were supposed to actually care, but my reaction was a surge of joy that there would be one less character to try to keep straight. Not that I ever successfully navigated the endless roster of others.

We then watch as a bumbling British detective attempts to unravel the mystery. If he is typical of the London police force, its no wonder that they never caught Jack the Ripper. Actually, its a greater wonder why the streets of London aren't an ongoing, serial murderer free-for-all. But through it all, we have great difficulty mustering any real feelings of sympathy for the dead man, whom everyone apparently hated anyway, or desire to figure out who-done-it. In fact, one of the characters, whom I couldn't identify now if a gun were held to my head, summed it up best in a line of dialogue from the film: "I really couldn't care less who did it or why."

We eventually did find out who committed the murder, but after this two hour plus marathon of ennui, I was far beyond giving a hoot. The only real challenge left, after the first, oh, half hour, was to make it to the end at all in a mental state above comatose. But I have a message for Robert Altman, just in case he decides to make another movie examining the overexplored topic of class structure and interaction in Britian:

BITE ME!


And here are the answers to the quiz above:
1. Tony Blair
2. Jean Chretien
3. John Howard
4. Atal Bihari Vajpayee


Last Week: Cat in the Hat:

Then all of the Whos and Whoettes in Whoville,
kicked Mike Myers ass till they all had their fill...


Um, er, ah, yes. Sorry. I just awakened from a really nice dream. On with the review.

There is one really fundamental problem with this movie. You see, at some point, some high powered studio exec somewhere was sitting around home reading a cute children's story poem to his children, grandchildren or group of yard apes he lured into his home. Then suddenly, it dawned on him: "Hey! This would make a great movie!"

Right there we begin to understand just how hard up for ideas Hollywood is these days. But things only got worse from there. In fact, as he pitched this to his partners, things got much, much worse.

At some point, after everyone started nodding in agreement that this disaster was a good idea, somebody else spoke up: "I have an idea how to make this thing even better! We'll get a Baldwin brother to play the heavy!"

Understand that there wasn't a heavy in the original story, but of course, that had to be fleshed out into and 82 minute almost full length motion picture, so I guess everyone else thought it was a good idea too.

Curiously, there is a Baldwin brother who apparently figured his career is far enough down the great rolling eddie that this couldn't possibly hurt, so Alec actually signed on. I join the mighty throng out there in astonishment, however one has to figure that after this mess got green lighted in the first place, things were pretty much up for grabs.

But believe it or not, the worst was yet to come. Still another member of the group spoke up with this idea: " I really think we could set this thing up royal if we got some half way recognizable alum from Saturday night live to don the makeup and play the cat, instead of just digitizing him. Besides, it will probably be cheaper."

No argument there I suppose, but I believe that any studio exec that decides to cast a former SNL star in a film should be tied to a chair and forced to watch every previous movie ever made that starred one of the cast offs. It doesn't matter which movie they start with, but it has to end with Its Pat!" I seriously believe that if any studio exec had to endure something like that, we'd never see another movie starring a SNL alum or current cast member, and the world could back a short distance away from the precipice of apocalypse.

This time we are forced to endure Mike Myers as the cat. He can be pretty annoying on his own, but behind the tacky makeup and costume that was designed for this movie, he was nearly unbearable. It was enough to make me seriously contemplate cutting off my head with a dull fingernail file, and tossing it at the screen.

There wasn't much to enjoy here either. There were comic book bright set, a couple of annoying child actors, some bad special effects and a pathetic story line. We didn't even get to hear the Cat in the Hat song: You know, the one that goes, "Cat, hat, in French chat chapeaux. In Spanish he's a Gato in a sombrero!" That was a glaring omission, although the thought of Myers belting out another song wasn't that appealing, come to think of it.

There are only two things we are left to hope for after seeing this film. First, if there is a God in heaven, this film will tank badly enough to prevent all possibility of the filming of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Second, maybe we can move beyond any more full length films based on Dr. Seuss books. In other words, I really don't want to hear that Chris Farley is already being fitted for a Horton costume.

You knew this was coming, so I won't disappoint you. A few minutes cleaning the litter box is a lot more fun that this film edition of Cat in the Hat, and definitely time better spent.


Last Week: Ocean's Twelve:

There is a subplot point in this movie so utterly retarded that to reveal it would make it absolutely pointless to see this movie. Actually, it is anyway, but the studio is begging, pleading and threatening reviewers with keeping it under their hat.

Its not that I owe them anything. In fact, in my mind they owe me the admission to this film back. Still, I'm not going to spill the beans simply because I'm going to give you a much better reason not to see Ocean's Twelve.

Put bluntly, as we are willing to do it on this page, the movie blows. Its worse than the first one, referring to the remake, and not the original, which wasn't all that good either. Sure, there is enough eye candy in this film to make most of America, particular the female side, do a lot of salavating. But the creamy chocolate cover has a bitter tasting center.

In the first place, this movie should have been about 6 minutes long. It opens with Danny Ocean (George Clooney) out shopping for (presumably to steal) jewelry for his anniversary with his wife Tess (Julia Roberts).

As they are speaking on the cellphone, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) shows up at their house. As you recall, he was Tess's love interest in the first film, and Danny Ocean and his gang robbed Terry's casino of $160 million dollars. Now Terry wants it back, with interest.

So, Danny rushes home to confront Terry. Here is where the movie should have reached its climax and ended. In fact, it should have wrapped up quite quickly like this:

Terry: Ocean, you stoled my money and I want it back!

Danny: Bite me.

THE END: fade to black, cue closing theme, roll credits.

Instead, this film plods on for over two hours. The worst part is, that even ignoring the quick ending I've just outlined, it could have been about a half hour long, if they had actually just showed us what happened instead of jerking us around by leading us through an intolerable series of plots and subplots, mostly designed to flesh out a very brief story into and unnecessarily long 130 minute film.

All of the characters from the original are back in this film, not that you get to see most of them for more than 30 seconds. I would suspect that a couple of otherwise marquee talents in Hollywood had to settle for a union scale paycheck for this effort.

Even Julia Roberts has to sit on the sidelines for the vast majority of this movie. She disappears from the action after the original scene for so long that we actually almost forget that she ever makes an appearance.

The original gang of thieves jet off to Europe to steal some precious gold egg, hoping to sell it off in order to pay off Benedict. The egg looks like it might bring about $12.50 on eBay. But another master thief challenges Ocean's gang to see who can steal it first, mostly to give this film some sort of plot. Great, we get to sit through a two hour pissing contest between a bunch of guys who belong in jail anyway.

Ocean's gang spins an intricate plot to steal the egg that, once again, would have cost twice as much as they needed to get out of it to pay off Benedict. Then we find out we've been completey jerked around. Not just by investing an hour and a half more than we needed to, but for what we paid to see it.


Last Week: Rumor Has It:

This is what happens when a script from The Jerry Springer Show is adapted into a full length motion picture. It might have looked pretty good on paper: Sort of a weird twist on the Oedipus complex with a modern slant. The idea is even original enough. Then the sad combination of bad casting and mediocre writing sunk an otherwise promising premise.

Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Anniston) is a young New York City journalist on her way back to Pasadena with her boyfriend, Jeff Daly (Mark Ruffalo), to attend her sister's wedding. The two are also engaged, but Sarah is also starting to have doubts about her relationship.

Now we can step aside here for a moment to note that probably ANY woman who is engaged to Mark Ruffalo might be having some second thoughts. The man is a set of lips in search of a human with a personality to attach themselves to. Can anyone else out there figure out how Ruffalo keeps landing these leading man roles? Ruffalo is so wooden that somebody is apt to nail him over the windows next time a hurricane blows in.

Then again, that makes Anniston almost a perfect match for him. She is hair in search of a human with a personality to grow out of. Anniston wanders through all of her movies looking as clueless as George W. Bush in a physics class. Curiously, neither of them were the worst cast actors in this film.

Upon arriving home, Sarah learns that her family might be the real life inspiration for the Robinsons in the film The Graduate. Her grandmother (Shirley McLaine) was the real life inspiration for the infamous Mrs. Robinson, while her mother was Benjamin's true love.

But in reality, her mother didn't actually run away with Benjamin at the alter. She just ran off to Mexico the week before the wedding and had a fling, before returning home to marry Sarah's father. But when Jeff does the math for her, Sarah begins to wonder if it is her father who is her real biological dad, or the man with whom her mother had an affair. Suddenly, we realize that Sarah isn't the brightest bulb in the socket. No where in the course of her thirty some years on the planet had she actually figured out that she was evidently conceived prior to her parent's wedding.

Sarah goes off in search of the man who might really be her father, Beau Barringer (Kevin Costner). Naturally she ends up being overwhelmingly charmed by him, and like her mother and grandmother, ends up in his bed. At this point, we almost had to swim out of a theater flooding with the product of mass nausea, as we had to deal with either one of the grossest examples of incest in cinematic history, or at the very least, a really creepy May-October love affair.

It strikes us at this point that it probably isn't all that surprising that a woman who would fall for Mark Ruffalo would find Kevin Costner to be a rare delight. If you are in love with a stick, another stick with a leaf stuck to it probably looks pretty good by comparison. Still, in a world with no particular shortage of full blown and available trees, we think she is artifically limiting her options. Shirley McLaine as aged Mrs. Robinson is a bit of tired casting. How weary have we all grown of seen Ms. McLaine cast as a foul mouthed, aging Diva? How weary have we all grown of seeing Ms. McLaine cast in a movie period?

Then, for the first and probably only time we will ever see it happen, Kevin Costner is cast in a role he was actually probably too young for. Kathy Bates is cast in a role so small it wouldn't be inaccurate to call it a walk on. She is totally wasted. The only character in the whole film that came out ahead was Sarah's dear departed mother. She never had to appear on screen.


Last Week: Miss Potter:

At some point during the filming of this movie, a competent director would have shouted, "CUT!!!" and confiscated the endless supply of lemons Renee Zellweger evidently insisted on sucking. When the actress portraying your lead character waltzes through the film looking like her face is losing a life and death battle with a Hoover, you have to realize that you have a problem; unless, of course, you are as clueless as Chris Noonan. Wasn't he a member of some 60's rock band? Herman's Hermits? No, I guess that was Peter Noone. Never mind.

I'd have probably like this film a whole lot better if they hadn't made me wait 3 months to see it. I started seeing previews for it way last January, then it never came out and never came out. Finally, they had a one night sneak preview in about mid-February, but we weren't able to attend. Usually when studios launch a sneak preview, the film is released a week or two later. Not this one; we had to wait another month.

As a general rule, pissing Kex off isn't a real good idea unless your movie is pretty strong. Okay, this one wasn't terrible, but it wasn't any where near good enough to survive making me wait this long either. Worse still, the Noonan couldn't even figure out that he had the two principle female actresses playing the wrong parts.

Zellweger portrayed Beatrix Potter, who remains the all time best selling author of children's books, assuming that you don't count the lady who wrote Harry Potter. Emily Watson played Millie Warne, who was the sister of the man Miss Potter almost married, but didn't because he died. I think this movie would have been considerably better if they had switched roles. Zellweger is a master of playing characters who are a bit unbalanced, whereas Watson just looks like somebody who would compose wonderful children's stories and draw magnificent pictures.

A lot of this story is told in flashback which automatically means it sucks. We have to endure the tales of Miss Potter's childhood, interwoven with her rise to fame and wealth as an author. NOw, it's not exactly like there is anything magnificently interesting about her childhood. She didn't rise up from abject poverty or have a flaky mother like Charlie Chaplin. She wasn't a Dicken's style orphan.

No, she grew up in a wealthy family. The greatest conflict in her life involved the refusal to settle down and marry any of the suitors her parents presented. Instead, she decided to write and draw, and had all sorts of pull with publishing houses since her parents owned a couple of percent of Great Britain. It's not the kind of thing that causes people in the audience to leave thinking, "yeah, my life sucks, but I could rise up and make something of myself just like she did!"

No folks, this lady was going to live and die wealthy no matter what. Now, that doesn't mean that she wasn't talented, or didn't deserve glowing recognition in the realms of historic literature. But her story just isn't the kind of universal struggle that we can all relate to...at least not for those of us who didn't grow up with and always enjoy fantastic wealth.

Beatrix Potter grows up and becomes a well know author. But her blue blood mother is unhappy because she isn't interested in marriage. That changes as she becomes close to her publisher and falls in love. They get engaged, but her parents disapprove, mostly because he is a tradesman. Effectively, Miss Potter's parents are insufferable snobs. In other words, they differ from a large portion of the population of England by virtue of the fact that they have a crapload of money.

Her parents eventually agree to the marriage, on the condition that she spends the summer with them in the Northlands just to see if the relationship will survive a seperation of a few months. She agrees. The relationship doesn't survive because he dies. She is heartbroken, but still rich and famous, which makes it a whole lot easier to simply go on with your life. If you never have crap except for one person you love, and he/she/it dies, I'm thinking it is probably a whole lot harder to endure.

She goes on writing, meets another man, gets married, and buys up most of whatever part of England her parents and the royal family don't own. To her credit, she donates a bunch of land back to the people of England. I guess you could say that she was among the first of the Empire's conservationists, which makes her admirable for another reason.

In all, this wasn't a terrible movie. It just wasn't the kind of movie that is going to put you in th mindset to go out and make the world a better place. If you want to do that, reading Kex's Amazing World is a whole lot better way to spend your time.







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