"Please, oh please let them not be watching."

ROB LOWE FILM REVIEWS


Atomic Train
Television with remote control: $200
Batteries for remote control: $1.99
Bottle of Coke: $0.99
Chips: $1.79
Trying to watch Atomic Train: 5 minutes of my life I'm never getting back
Realizing obsession with Sam does not extend to Rob Lowe, thus regaining one modicum of self-respect: priceless


Bad Influence
He played a real slimebag, but for the first hour or so of the movie, you really kinda like him. The movie was perhaps a bit inappropriate, and I think they capitalized on the Sex Video a bit, but his acting was superb, even if his hair was stupid.


Contact
This movie ROCKS! Contact is definitely the movie to watch if you want thought provoking escapism. Unfortunately for Rob Lowe, he has just about the worst role in this movie next to the dude from Picket Fences, Tom Skerritt. While Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey debate the meaning of faith, science and God in a non-banter way. And while the UST crackles between the two, Rob Lowe is just a southern conservative religious right's leader drowning in the background. The movie itself is excellent; it examines our place in the universe and our perceptions of faith and science. Jodie Foster rules as the woman scientist driven to search the stars for something more, but if your looking for Rob Lowe, let me warn you now, this was definitely a bad hair movie. And definitely a bad accent movie. Basically you hate his character, Richard Rank. But he plays the bad guy so well. (-Ali)


Crazy Six
Kinda disturbing but kinda good. You feel kinda out of it when watching because of the weird colors. Didn't like his hair in this one. I don't think RL's character's emotions were conveyed as well as the villains'. The female lead, Ivana, was good. (-Caitlin)


The Finest Hour
Good film. There's a love triangle between Hammer, his good buddy in the navy, and his off-and-on girlfriend. For some reason, this triangle didn't make me gag like some other movies. The movie focuses mainly on Hammer and his friendship with his...well, friend. It would have been better if more of Hammer's past was shown. RL was pretty innocent in this one. Hammer's kind, physically tough, and sexed-up. He didn't seem that bright though... (-Caitlin)


Frank and Jesse
The best western I ever saw. Violence was not glorified, in fact it seemed necessary in the film. I set the VCR for taping it in the wee hours of morning, planning to delete it after watching it. After I finished the film, I decided not to delete it. Bill Paxton was really good in his role as Frank, Jesse's (Rob Lowe) older brother. It's a really good movie. Go see it. *nudge* Go. (-Caitlin)


Masquerade
A suspenseful film. Almost soap opera-like, except I cared. You get shots of RL sailing, and I imagined it was Sam. :)
Tim Whalen is a young sailing instructor who starts dating the richest girl in town. There is an plan to kill her, but we don't know who wants her dead. Tim is in on the plan. He seemed morally ambiguous throughout most of the film. But at the end, he goes to one side of good or evil. (-Caitlin)


On Dangerous Ground
Why did I watch this movie? Well, about a month ago it was on in Canada instead of West Wing and I was intrigued by shots of Rob Lowe loading a gun and punching somebody. Basically. So on with the review. Let me just say, Scotland is much prettier and not as deserted as the locations in this movie make it look. On Dangerous Ground could be considered a thinking person's mystery suspense thriller, if there were any indication at all that thinking people had anything to do with this movie in the first place. The book by Jack Higgins is much better. Rob Lowe stars, sporting nice hair and decent threads. He plays a former IRA terrorist (sans Irish accent?!) turned treasure-hunting mercenary. He gets jerked around by a very badly-accented Kenneth Cranham, as the German multi-millionaire who hires him to find a silver Bible with a priceless paper about Hong Kong in it, and some Mafia guys and some Tong guys try to kill him. Somehow, Rob Lowe discovers he actually has a conscience (due either to the attentions of Kenneth Cranham's young stepdaughter or the girlfriend we don't know exists until the end of the movie). This ethical awakening prompts him to save the stepdaughter's life several times and attempt to retrieve the treasure for its rightful owners (some good down-home Scottish manor peeps). He's hindered in this noble pursuit by a speedboat-wielding, not-so-innocent-after-all stepdaughter. In any case, this movie has some credible moments, and Rob Lowe does a good job playing the morally tortured semi-good guy. Except for the fact that he looks, sounds, and moves like he's half-dead. Definitely see On Dangerous Ground, if only to deepen your appreciation for Sam's niceness. (-BJ)


The Outsiders
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton is my favorite book. The film adaptation is, in my opinion, weaker than the novel. The book isn't that long, and I recommend people to read it before seeing the movie.
The Outsiders is about a gang of greasers who are at war with the teenagers of elite society, the Socs. I think the story is more about friendship and the hopelessness of being a 'hood' than "belonging", as the tagline says.
Rob Lowe isn't in this one that much. He's the middle Curtis brother, Sodapop. The story is centered mostly around the youngest Curtis brother, Ponyboy. (Mr. Lowe looked scrawnier than C. Thomas Howell, the actor who played Ponyboy.) Strange names, I know, but I'm used to it by now. The oldest Curtis brother is Darry, who is also the unofficial leader of the gang. The other two central characters are Dally, the hard greaser who used to live in New York, and Johnny, a timid kid who had a traumatic experience being beat up by Socs. (-Caitlin)


Proximity
This film was okay, and it has potential , but I feel it was not one of his best films. It was interesting to see Rob Lowe take the perspective of a prisoner in a jail cell--on the inside of the jail system. The shots of him in his cell, the trauma of the experience seemed real, and he did a good job conveying this emotion. The immediacy and urgency of this feeling was deeply expressed a number of times. Most remarkable was his experience at 4 am while hearing his fellow prisoner Cole either being hanged or hanging himself. His yelling out of the cell to get attention was quite effective and real. His initial meeting with his attorney Eric was also quite effective in conveying the serious emotional impact of a prison experience, especially on those who are not "hardened" to the system. The action scenes were credible, but the time lapse photography was somewhat gratuitous. I felt there was no need for this unless it was coordinated with the passage of time in a very real way, which might better be shown through flashbacks of an earlier time with him and his wife and son. Also, the plot involving the female student was not very well developed. I think more time should have been spent on these characters, rather than so much focus on the action scenes, and activities of the inside baddies, including James Coburn. It was hard to empathize with the victims' families, without some development of the character realtionships amongst the family as well as with the "criminal" and the "act". Rob Lowe's attempts to reunite with his wife and son were "noble", and in the end he triumphed. But, the actual progression of changes of this relationship were also not developed enough to make it feel credible. I guess these are all factors of time. I felt that James Coburn did a good job with his part. The closing shot of him getting into the police car, handcuffed, left me feeling that he was just happy to have been able to get into the car without passing out. In other words, it was not a good shot. I could not understand the reason for this focus. Overall, I felt the film could have been better, and this could have been accomplished through more involvement with the families, children and females, rather than the maniacal gun toting men who took up most of the footage. They would all have "shone" better with a more fully rounded plot.


St. Elmo's Fire
Everyone should see this movie. I don't care about how people's hair looked, or if they don't like the '80s. Despite the quite obvious time frame the movie is trapped in, this movie can be enjoyed. The characterizations were good. Great performances by everyone, and there's this amusing scene where Billy breaks open an unlocked door.
There's shots of Billy playing football (imagines Sam in his place), and RL playing the saxaphone. It was a great picture. (the man has sexy arms...) Ahem. And therefore I recommend it to everyone. (-Caitlin)


The Stand
This movie is adapted from the book by Stephen King. But since S. King took part in the making of the movie, the movie is just as good as the book. Read and watch both, if you have the time.
The Stand is about a superflu that wipes out nearly the entire population. It was caused by the government. *snicker* The story is about the fight between good and evil. People who are immune from the disease join either the good side (led by Mother Abigail), or the bad (led by Randall Flagg aka the Dark Man).
Rob Lowe plays Nick Andros, a self-sufficient deaf-mute who can read lips, read, and write. All the actors involved turn in extremely good performances. The movie is long, but it definitely won't be a waste of time. Surprisingly, it's under the horror section. I don't find it very horrific, but ah well...Go rent it. It's great. (-Caitlin)


Tommy Boy
So, I made a challenge to myself: write a review of Tommy Boy that doesn't include the word "suck". And seeing as I've already shot that to hell, why don't we continue unabated? This film sucks hard, it sucks a lot, it takes a beating and keeps on sucking. I mean, sure, stupid can be funny (my life's a laugh-riot), but there's a difference between being funny and making people cringe and wonder why they paid... Oh, right, I got the rental for free because someone else demanded I watch it. But it wasted my time. Time's important too, damnit. Gone are those ninety or so minutes. Gone, gone, gone! Curse you, David Spade, and your little Joe Dirt mullet too! The only things that didn't totally suck were Rob Lowe, his hair, and his brief moment of non-shirt-wearing-ness. But I'm figuring most of you don't need me to say any of this; I'm figuring most of you already know this, because you've already seen it, because Rob Lowe is in it. For those of you who didn't know, and are now thinking, "I was going to go to Blockbuster anyway..." let me reiterate: Tommy Boy sucks. No, it more than sucks, it suckity-suck-sucks. What's next? (-Kacey)


Wayne's World
Watch it if you're in the mood for something silly or funny. RL plays a one dimensional charcter, but it works out for the plot. He plays this sneaky, selfish, mean businesss guy who suddenly changes in one of the various endings for the movie. (-Caitlin)

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