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Howards End (1992)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 10/10

HowE
10/10: After seeing A Room with a View for the second time, I played Howards End with great apprehension.

Of course, my worst fears were realized. Not only is the film bad, but it's also worse than the former. I haven't seen acting this pretentious since The Age of Innocence. Although there's nice cinematography, the show kept getting worse and worse, and I had to take breaks to slow down the decline of quality.

The story is boring, the characters are one-dimensional, and the subplots fail to grab my interest. Not much of what's going on is connecting; eventually, they've become pointless. Also, there's nothing to like about the themes as they're hard for me to relate to.

Back to the acting, it's painfully obvious that everybody was attempting to recapture the feel and decorum of the early 20th century English society, but they're all pretending. If Howards End was filmed during the 40's, it would've worked out because the players could do it easily. But it's just fake...fake...fake...fake.

Nonetheless, I like the costumes, the cars, and the set pieces which have me thinking, "Maybe, that's the point of the film: the look." One reviewer on IMDb said, "When Leonard Bast couldn't catch up with Helen in the rain, I knew we were in trouble. All he had to do was run. Then, when she goes indoors, he waits outside in the rain and gets soaking wet. Why not ring the doorbell? When he finally gets inside, there is a question as to which umbrella it is that Helen has stolen. Wasn't one of them wet?" Yeah...I thought so.

All in all, Howards End should've been retitled as The End of Acting as We Know It.