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Movie Reviews: 'A Good Year'

Ridley Scott's A Good Year is a not-so-good film, most critics have concluded. In it, Russell Crowe portrays a stuffy Englishman who, in midlife, inherits a chateau in Provence, which changes him. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer says it amounts to a "nicely shot travelogue." Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun calls it an "over-produced frolic." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News says it's "a misfire on so many levels -- script, casting, direction." Jan Stuart in Newsday focuses on the direction. "In Scott's hands," he writes, "it feels like six movies in search of a unifying tone. There is nothing Mr. Blade Runner won't try in the name of levity: pratfalls, peeing dogs, dumb-cluck American tourists, speeded-up motion, soft-focus flashbacks, pop hits from Patti Paige to Harry Nilsson to Charles Trenet." Crowe also comes in for a tongue lashing from several critics. "Russell Crowe trying to twinkle may not be the most unsettling thing on the big screen this season, but it's up there," comments Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News.Indeed, several critics wonder just shy Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe would be making a romantic comedy together to begin with. As Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles Times, "What we're not looking for is a romantic comedy made by individuals with no special feeling for the genre who stretch a half hour's worth of story to nearly two hours."