Venus

A Boring movie. The acting is fine, but that cannot make this movie good. Toenail humor does not work. Shame on Peter O'Toole. If Hulk Hogan had done this film, viewers would admit it sucks bigtime. But, Peter "deserves" an award. He is a good actor. Yep. The cast is fine and they have a few scenes that are worth seeing. Some of the dialog, especially between Peter and his old sho-biz buds, are laughable. Unfortunately those few scenes are like strawberries in a garbage can. The totality of this film is not entertaining. If you want to see three old men having fun with their years, watch Going in Style with George Burns. The Three Stooges did not have to resort to proctologist finger closeups and needles being inserted into skin to get big laughs. Watchability is what this movie lacks. There is no way a group of friends will get together on a yearly basis to watch this poor excuse for entertainment. In the old days of Elvis movies and Gene Autry movies, the plot revolved around a song that led to a fight and a fight that led to a song. This movie has an attempted joke that leads to a disgusting moment which leads to a close up of someone's yellow teeth and then someone's foot. Peter O'Toole looks too sick here to be playing the part of a patient. Put a sheet over him and get it over with. I believe Peter could still do a really good movie. He could do something exciting. He could do real comedy again as he has done before. He will need makeup and hair and a stunt double, of course. If catheters were funny, we would see more of them onstage in Las Vegas. The Emperor has no clothes. I hope this is not Peter's last hurrah. Boo. Tom Willett

I came to this film with high expectations, having been led to believe that it dealt bravely and honestly with sexuality amongst old people. I found the acting excellent. However, the behaviour of the people in the film was frequently tawdry and exploitative. If a younger man had been shown behaving as did the character played by Peter O'Toole he would, I believe, have been recognised as the moral incompetent that he is. To expect us to sympathise with this, simply because he is old is a form of inverse ageism. The same applied to the responses of the so-called "friends" who, when he needed assistance when he was ill, were noticeable for their unwillingness to help. Again, these responses are not rendered acceptable because of the age of the characters concerned. If, on the other hand, we were supposed to find them all uncongenial - why bother at all? The transformation of the young women I found completely implausible on the evidence we were given. Disappointing.

Films about older men with much, much younger women can be good. For example, Nick Nolte in The Good Thief or Michael Caine in The Quiet American. Better still, in real life no man ever ought miss having a relationship with a girl 35 or 40 years younger; nor should a young girl ever miss the experience of involvement with an older man. In the case of the Nick Nolte and Michael Caine films, each man remained a truly interesting person whose matured character would be like a magnet to a beautiful young woman regardless of whether she's tired of the immature airheads her own age. Not so with Peter O'Toole in VENUS. Herein O'Toole has evolved into a bored-with-himself doddering old geezer who's more apt to drool half his meal down his shirt than find a believable way of charming a 20 year old. Picture Uncle Junior on The Sopranos chasing after Lindsey Lohan and you get the idea. While O'Toole is shrewd enough to play-the-sympathy of the young woman, his taking another guy's toenail clipping out of his pocket in a public place and waving it around is not the makings of a sly fox. Ugh! Many scenes are alleged to be charming and insightful in VENUS, and therein is the self-delusion of the filmmaker. VENUS is a disgusting movie. The waste can is the place for it.

I'd give this unpleasant film a miss. It is extraordinary how such a good combination of ingredients - excellent actors, filmed in English, in England - can produce such a nasty result. The plot doesn't hang together well. Various ideas are brought up in a scene only to be discarded completely, with no particular relevance to anything. The film is maninly an attack on old age and it aims as many humiliations at the elderly as it possibly can. The gratuitous nastiness extends to all sorts of situations - there's an impossibly callous and cruel surgeon, an unconvincingly brutal boy friend and many others. Peter O'Toole acts brilliantly, of course, but it is all such a waste. The film is maudlin and mawkish at the same time as being nasty - an unusual combination, I suppose, but that's no reason to waste time seeing this. The girl acts fairly well too, but, again, to little point. Here character isn't well developed, and certainly not pleasant enough to warrant any attention from an old man. She is unconvincing on many levels. I'm sure, that with a decent script, and an interesting plot, she could be a reasonably good actress, but this would be thin material for even a top flight actress. There are some feeble attempts at humour. Probably the best example is; 'You know what they say about blind prostitutes?' 'You've got to hand it to them'. Brilliant wit, eh? And that's about as good as it gets.