Q. So this raises a question for me--considering that an excellent movie is a synthesis of excellent writing, excellent directing, excellent acting, etc. Are there any movies that you can tell had a great screenplay, but were poorly executed?A few, but very rarely, because a great script rarely survives a bad director. Directors generally have carte blanche to hire rewriters, and they have the rewriter take the script off in a direction it doesn't want to go. The result is a mish-mash Frankenstein monster that no one can direct well. It takes a good director to realize that a good script is good the way it is and not have it rewritten to suit his "vision."
I do remember watching Toys and thinking that the script itself was actually quite funny, but Barry Levinson's lugubrious dramatic direction killed the humor.
I also remember seeing Basic Instinct and being shocked that Verhoeven followed the script word for word; possibly one reason the movie is so effective.
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I was dismayed to see Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" on the list. I love some of his other work, but I thought "Adaptation" was a only two thirds of a good film.
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