johnnyrimes
This takes nothing away from Kubrick's earlier film, and, in fact, should be viewed as a totally different animal. I love Kubrick's original, but it's not really the same story King told at all. The miniseries, aside from delivering great scares and maintaining the tension well, conveys the tragedy of the story as well as the horror. Jack is a loving husband and father with a monster on his back, and is slowly possessed by an evil entity in the Overlook Hotel that is bent on using him to destroy his family. That's what sets it apart the most from the Kubrick version. Jack is a full character with an arc versus a man who was already psychotic prior to taking the job of hotel character. Steven Weber is fantastic at portraying the duality and conflict within the character and delivers my favorite interpretation of the character.
sbrooks839
What in the world was Stephen King thinking when he made this 5 hour travesty? Or better yet, what wasn't he thinking? He threw everything and the kitchen sink in this, yet sadly nothing stuck. I know he openly detested Stanley Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece, a stunning classic of cerebral horror on a grand scale that has yet to ever be equaled. But, was that a reason to defile your own work, Stephen, and try to re- adapt it - and for television at that? The answer is a resounding no!From the start, King and director Mick Garris do everything wrong, from the opening shot of Jack Torrance in the boiler room with Watson, to the horrendous outdoor scene of people still at the hotel playing croquet. So much for creating any sense of isolation. Yes, you can forget any kind of feeling of anyone being isolated, killing any further buildup of feelings of claustrophobia and doom.Oh, and also let me mention how pretty much from the get-go, King butchers his own novel. Yes, he made changes that would even stump Stanley Kubrick, who performed plastic surgery on the novel in his awesome adaptation; and rightly so. Number one, it is mentioned that Grady was at the Overlook alone when he killed himself. That's right. By himself. No wife. No twin girls. No family at all. Just him. Not the way I remember it from the book. And I've read the book so many times over the years, I've lost count. And King wanted to badmouth Kubrick for the changes he made when adapting the novel. OK, makes sense...NOT.Then, if all that isn't bad enough, director Garrison keeps throwing in these senseless flashbacks that do nothing but dumb the story down to the umpteenth degree. You know, like they do on the "CSI" shows, you know, because they feel people are too stupid to follow what's been said, so they have to show you as well as tell you. And it robs the movie of any kind of suspense right off the bat.And, again, as if other things that dumbed down this version wasn't enough, they feel the need to remind you that Jack Torrance is/was an alcoholic, and he had a "problem", and he hurt Danny, and he lost his teaching job because of his drinking problem every chance they get. Which is like every five minutes. Telling the audience one time isn't enough. Oh no. They obviously felt the audience was too dumb to get that, so they felt the need to throw it in as many times as possible so you would, you know, get it. Dreadful.And, I will slightly mention since I'm talking about certain characters/cast members, another heavy criticism I've heard over the years against the Kubrick film I've never understood was against the great Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance, a role I feel she was simply brilliant in. Well, over the years, I've read negative reviews talk about how she was so wrong for the role, how she was too whiny and too weak, blah blah blah. Well, here's the deal. Sure, Rebecca DeMornay is more like the novel Wendy, however, visually on film, I just don't buy that a woman that strong would be with a man like Jack. Nope. Never. Not in a million years. She would beat the h*ll out of him, set him on fire, cuss him until he cried, and make him her little b**ch. True story.Thus, making her all wrong for the role film-wise. But she's the best actor in the whole thing. Yeah, I said it, and I meant it. And, as for Wendy, I really don't get where people get that Shelley Duvall's Wendy was a weak woman. Sure, she was meek, and a little timid around Jack, but pay attention next time you see it, and notice that any time when it comes to Danny, and Wendy thinks Jack may have (or possibly will) hurt him, she turns into a ferocious protective mother, standing her ground, not afraid of Jack in the least.I really liked Courtland Mead's small part in the movie Go, but he is completely wasted here. I blame it on bad direction. And that goes for the performance of everyone else in this. Awful. Atrocious. And I blame it on bad direction from Garris. Watch anyone of them in something else. Heck, watch something else than this altogether, and you will be better off.Anyways, even though King made some other questionable changes from his novel in this, I will give it two stars for at least being somewhat as close as it can be. I still prefer the Kubrick version. Always have. Always will. Especially after seeing this stinker.
Rueiro
I am not going to compare this piece of rubbish to Kubrick's film; too many viewers have already done that.In my opinion, "The shining" is one of King's few novels worth reading. Some parts of it are slow-paced and boring, with the usual long descriptions of the characters' past and misfortunes in which King always likes to indulge himself for dozens of pages. That is the most irritating thing about his books. It is OK if you are writing "War and Peace" or "Gone with the Wind", but not for a horror flick. You should stick to the main story instead of creating sub-plot family melodramas.Anyway, "The Shining" is not an easy book to adapt, and only a very competent screenwriter who knows his trade and a film-maker equally effective can deliver a good movie out of the book. Kubrick, who was both things, did it, and that was it. They could try and make a dozen remakes of the story in the next one hundred years and they wouldn't get it any better. I re-read the novel very recently, and then I watched King's only approved and much blessed official adaptation in order to see how true to its title is. I felt pity. It is more faithful to the book than Kubrick's, I gave it that, but still it is not as faithful as the title and all the publicity initially promise, and that is cheating the spectator. All right, it shows Jack's alcoholic past in flashbacks, but was that really necessary in order to understand what happens later at the hotel? Also it shows Tony, and what for? In the book Danny only sees him once or twice and always from very far away, a blurred shadow. Why turning him into a character that is popping up in the screen every half an hour? He can't help Danny at all but only keeps telling him he shouldn't have come to the hotel, so what's the point? It is bloody irritating, and the actor looks silly!Then, there is the topiary. I laughed at the ignorance and ingenuity of many viewers who rave about this remake and put Kubrick's film down only because it doesn't show the hedge animals... Dear cultured critics: back in 1980 CGI was still sci-fi fantasy, and the only way to have shot that sequence would have been by combining live action with animation (go and check "Mary Poppins" to see what I'm talking about if you don't follow me). So Kubrick did very well by leaving the episode out instead of making a silly thing that would have looked laughable in what is supposed to be a a horror chiller. And that is precisely one of the biggest follies this adaptation has, and even the CGI is cheap and badly done and brings more laughs than shivers because the animals look like bird droppings on the snow!Then the cast is terrible. Someone mentioned that a monkey with a telephone book would have done a better casting, and he is right. The actors seem like they never bothered to read the book in order to understand what the story is about and get to know their characters. The kid was just that, so we can't blame him. But Rebecca de Mornay and the fellow who plays Jack (who is he, by the way?) are as plain as cardboard cut-outs, and the same goes for the guy doing Grady, who instead of looking menacing he is a total duck. And Van Peebles looks like he just popped out of a Busby Berkeley musical, I was expecting him to burst singing and tap-dancing any second. The only one of whom it can be said gives a decent performance is Elliott Gould, who plays Ullmann as the cynical, sarcastic, tight-fist snob who thinks of "his" hotel as the greatest thing on earth, just as described in the book. And as for Stephen King's surprise cameo as the orchestra conductor, I didn't know whether to laugh or to be angry because he looks like a Loony Tunes caricature of Xavier Cugat.And then, the director of this mess seems to have thought himself to be a new Stanley Kubrick and tried to imitate the master's trademark of slow tracking shots that precede key events. Didn't he have any self- respect? And the ending... so happy-ever-after that is laughable, and so overloaded with syrup that it could kill a diabetic just from looking at it. This multi-million dollar egotistic heap made only to satisfy King's ego is just a waste of time, money and celluloid.
