Friends & Crocodiles (2006)

stephen poliakoff reached too far in this one

Having fallen desperately in love with Damian Lewis in NBC's "Life" this season (before it was cut short by the writers' strike) I set out to find everything else he'd done (including "Band of Brothers"). Mostly I wanted to see him working in his own native UK English. I was unfamiliar with writer/director Poliakoff's work. Does he always SO over-reach? Try to tell the story of Thatcher and Blair's roller-coaster economies through a pair of characters who aren't even in love, just drawn together by thoroughly conflicting economic principles? Lewis kept my eyes on him at all times. However, the actress in no way possesses the innate magnetism, suggestion of intellectual/economic brilliance, to make her convincing as someone he'd reach out to either as his possible equal or an amusing foil. February 26, 2008

Friends & Crocodiles

This movie is worth seeing just to witness Damien Lewis' brilliance!
I fell in love with him through this Brit flick. December 1, 2007

Squandering wealth and talent

When Stephen Poliakoff, the prolific British screenwriter
and director, is at his best, he has few peers. But like
Woody Allen, he is too prolific and apparently has no
friends to tell him NOT to release some new creation
of his, and he doesn't seem to lack for funding either.
Hence, on the heels of his BBC gem, THE LAST PRINCE,
he has produced two new movies, one of them so awful
that I shall not even bother with the other.
In a 2006 TV-movie, FRIENDS AND CROCODILES, he spent
a small fortune to mount a lavish production of an
incoherent story about an eccentric American (played
by Damiel Lewis) who has somehow made a fortune in
England and bought a lavish estate. One day he impulsively
hires as his personal assistant a young woman (Jodhi May)
whom he has seen a few times strolling at the perimeter
of his property. He tells her he wants her to organize
his voluminous creative files, but soon after she does
so, he throws a party to which he invites low-lifes and vandals
who trash his property and thoroughly destroy all the
work she has done for him. She quits, of course, but
years later, after a chance encounter, she meets him and
recommends him for a high-paying job as a creative con-
sultant in the company she works for, and he repeats the same
self-destructive pattern. Despite the opulence of the
production, none of this makes any sense-- at most, the
script should have been labelled "rough notes for a future
screenplay." Despite the impressive cast for his
sequel movie, GIDEON'S DAUGHTER, including Bill
Nighy, Miranda Richardson and Robert Lindsay, I shall
abstain. June 26, 2006

Terribly disappointing

This film starts off with great swirling Felliniesque pageantry, with Damian Lewis doing a brilliant perfectly tuned & on-target portrayal of a calm cool feral madman entrepreneur of the 1960s or 1970s, Paul Reynolds, surrounded by a collection of pretentious sycophants whose archetypes range back to the early Roman era. They party & posture amid the grounds of Paul's palatial estate when Lizzie strolls through, straight & serious Lizzie, for whom Paul develops an inexplicable attraction that ultimately leads to his & the film's doom. Lizzie, fresh from secretarial school, is hired by Paul as his personal assistant, although she at no time displays any sign of aptitude for either business or politics. Given the task of organizing Paul's vast collection of notes & papers into some kind of accessibility, she proudly displays her accomplishment: everything's been prettily packaged & shelved into four big color groups, bright cheery boxes with not a label in sight. Apparently she's interpreted her duties to be interior decor.

As played by Jodhi May, Lizzie portions her expressions out in either coy tilted-head smirks that teenage girls give dad when they want $80 for new jeans and violently hysterical outbursts that make you wonder if this all takes place in an alternate universe that knows no psychotherapy.

There are plenty of other problems placing this film in the known world, although it tries hard to represent specific points in time, *eras* as it refers self-consciously to them. There's pot-smoking, group sex & communal living, so is it the 1960s or the 1970s or the 1980s? Early on, Paul dreamily says to Lizzie, "Computers, you should get into computers, that's where the future is. Women used to prevail in the field of computers but now the guys are taking over." Oh yeah, when was that? Before mainframes or after?

As the film became progressively more choppy & episodic, I felt I was watching a pastiche of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead" (sans Shakespeare or Stoppard) as done by Ed Wood, all the real action taking place on an alternate stage/screen.

Vague generalizations substitute for plot movement as grand fluffy pronouncements as made about corporations being hippos & the future of business being in telecommunications & the internet rather than vacuum cleaners. Oh yeah? What heppened to PCs & cell phones?

Too bad. The first 20 minutes at Paul's estate and the ideas driving Friends & Crocodiles along with Damian Lewis's fine performance were really promising. Terrific title, too. But the title's explanation & the rest of the movie are a terrible letdown. March 5, 2006

More reviews at Amazon.com ...