Date: 25th August 2000

Movie Reviews: The Crew


The Crew is the second film this month to feature older actors, a fact that virtually every reviewer notes today. (The first film was Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys.)

"This is a great summer for geezers," writes Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News.

He, along with most of his colleagues, figures that the performances (by Richard Dreyfuss, Seymour Cassel, Dan Hedaya and Burt Reynolds playing retired gangsters) and direction (by Michael Dinner) in this film surmount a sitcommy script by sitcom writer Barry Fanaro (Benson, The Golden Girls). Writes Mike Clark in USA Today: "The Crew often livens up stale material with disarming loopiness and zest. ... Moviegoers can do worse, and, come to think, they have all year."

But Steve Murray in the Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that no amount of acting talent can overcome the film's script. "When Reynolds yells, 'We would have been better off dead,'" he writes, "you can't help thinking it's an ad lib, that he's speaking for the whole cast." A.O. Scott in the New York Times has this recommendation to those thinking about taking the movie in this weekend: "Just forget about it, O. .K.?"

Source: Studio Briefing