gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (12/17/84)
I gotta agree with the general press so far, but perhaps be a little less graceful. The story is a muddled mess. The internal dialogues are poorly used (reminded me of a Certs commercial)-but what could be done. TOTO's score (somebody had to be *really* coked up to have thought of that) is at best totally ignorable and at worst ridiculous (notably the electric guitar chord that keeps showing up while the Fremen are up riding on the giant sofa bolster-OOPS, *sandworm*. Good stuff: Visually, the movie is *so* well done that you wind up filled with a sort of rage at the fact that everything else is so poorly done. As science fiction, the sense of an "other" but complete world is brilliantly done. In fact, there is this occasional sense watching Lynch trying to control the morass that the little details (the little "squash the mousie" cocktail comes to mind here)nearly do it:it's the sense of detail visually that *almost* carries the whole bloody film. THat sense of detail is nearly totally lacking in the rest of the stuff. The good roles are all bit parts. That should warn you of something. Lynch does a creditable job of using the visual details of the film to carry his narration. The murk of his earlier films is strongly here (my SO suggested that the Guild steersman was the baby in Eraserhead, grown and holding a respectable job), but he's got too much to do, and too many loose ends. As a feast for the eyes and the imagination, give it a 9. As a faithful version of the Herbert, uh..... give it a pass on the basis of extenuating circumstances. As a movie, give it a crutch. Greg