MovieChat Forums > Shakespeare in Love (1999) Discussion > Saving Private Ryan is 8.6 while SIL is ...

Saving Private Ryan is 8.6 while SIL is 7.2


Also, SPR has higher overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ditto with Amazon.So, the fact is, the general consensus is more people like SPR than SIL. You can spin it anyway you want, but there you go.

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SIL is pretty boring. and also annoying. It's like real life they are all talking shakespearian. Please keep that in the plays not in real dialogue. ugggh.

Geoffrey Rush was the best part for me.

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That is how they spoke in the days of Shakespeare.

You don't actually think he just made all that language up, do you?

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It's like real life they are all talking shakespearian. Please keep that in the plays not in real dialogue. ugggh.


Well, you'd expect a bunch of playwrights and actors, who spend their entire working lives using that kind of blank verse and heightened 'poetic' style, to drop into it in their time off also. Hence the joke where Henslowe tells Will 'No, no! We haven't time. Talk prose'. Or did you not get that gag?

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It's like real life they are all talking shakespearian.
No, they're not. They are speaking ordinary literate English, as spoken by ordinarily literate English people.

The film is a love-letter to the theatre, particularly the London theatre, with jokes about chatty London cabbies, Harold Pinter's foibles, means of financing a fringe production, squabbles about the programme, the relative status of star and writer, elaborate sponsorship deals...

It's probably not for you.

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SPR is boring after the Normandy Invasion!

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Good lord. This nearly 20 years ago, get over it! The film or the makers of the film are not to blame for Saving Private Ryan loosing. Its who ran the better Oscar campaign which the director/actors had nothing to do with. It just goes to show how much of a joke the Oscars are. Do they really objectively rate all films in a given year? No, its whoever garners the most votes by the Academy members. An awards ceremony based on a select committee without campaigning would carry more weight.

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johnhorshack, this is an old debate that has gotten rather stale and boring. In any case, of all the possible perspectives and criteria to bring into the discussion, the very last thing I would set any store in is the silly overall rating in IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon. According to IMDB's rating, The Lion King usual rates higher than many of Hitchcock's masterpieces and The Dark Knight is considered one of the great films of all time. Total rubbish IMHO.

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According to IMDB's rating, The Lion King usual rates higher than many of Hitchcock's masterpieces and The Dark Knight is considered one of the great films of all time. Total rubbish IMHO.


Exactly, IMDB and Amazon are slanted towards public favorites and crowd pleasers, while Rotten Tomatoes is simply different reviews cherry picked by the website owners to reflect their personal opinion. I've seen positive reviews on RT that have been counted as rotten, and seen negative reviews by high profile critics (like Roger Ebert) that have been removed or ignored by RT.

Not to mention review aggregations and the enjoyment of a film are completely relative. To quote the late Roger Ebert: "People should be smart enough to listen to what we say instead of looking at the dumb stars, or the thumbs up/thumbs down."

~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.

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