A sporadically entertaining but uneven media satire that never quite delivers on its clear sense of moral outrage.
Comment
09/19/08
Live! (2007)
43
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:14
Fresh:6
Rotten:8
Average Rating:4.6/10
Consensus: Uneven media satire on how far TV will go to secure ratings. Unfortunately it’s neither as funny or as sharp as it hopes to be.
Starring: Eva Mendes, David Krumholtz, Eric Lively, Katie Cassidy
Director: Bill Guttentag
Reviews for Live!
1 - 15 (sorted by source; Australian critics are listed first)
Mendes (best known as Will Smith’s love interest in Hitch) is enjoyably poisonous, making Live! just about worth catching.
09/19/08
Smart, incisive, but not as sharp as it should have been. With a subject this ripe for evisceration, it’s a pity to let it off with flesh wounds.
09/19/08
Top CriticTriumphs, humiliation, barmy monologues and temper tantrums - reality television is scarcely in need of parodying. Certainly not from a preachy film like this.
09/19/08
Top CriticSo spake that prescient philosopher Julie Brown: "Just be vague, there's nothing to it."
07/16/07
Worth seeing for the slinky, snakelike, sexy and oddly vulnerable performance of Eva Mendes, a star-making role if I've ever seen one.
05/10/07
This straight-faced satire of American television raises important issues and is engaging enough to keep us gripped. But the astute commentary peaks too early, then gives way to a finale that's messy in more ways than one.
09/18/08
However, in a world where reality show formats are beyond parody, this particular gun goes off half-cocked.
09/19/08
Mendes' Courbet is all the c-words: clever, cunning, a control freak, cynical; ultimately conformist. Here's another c-word - Cowell, Simon Cowell. Like him, she knows what the public want - before even they know it.
09/18/08
There is a big problem in believing any of it, but a certain amount of fun watching television’s more ghastly denizens wonder whether murder will improve the ratings. It does.
09/19/08
It’s hard to distinguish between the cynical indifference of the characters and the arrogant nihilism of the film itself.
09/19/08
Bill Guttentag’s film is one of those shrill and cheery conspiracies on the wilder side of probability. But the black comedy has an infectious pace, and screwy logic.
09/19/08
Top CriticThis crass, inauthentic mock-doc exposing the evils of reality shows and the venality of TV honchos manages both to bore and insult simultaneously.
09/19/08
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10/18/08
Top CriticWatchable satire with some nice touches and a strong performance by Eva Mendes, but it's neither as funny, as clever or as original as it thinks it is.
09/18/08
1 - 15 (sorted by source; Australian critics are listed first)
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