Tempest

Paul Mazursky (of “Moscow on the Hudson” fame) does his patented "great talent runs amok" act here. The picture is long, but nevertheless engaging, and very pretty to watch, but ultimately rather frustrating because you never feel that Mazursky quite got around to getting his point across. You never understand the character played by John Cassavettes (who, luckily, is a much better actor than he is a writer-director) and as such everything kind of falls flat at the end. To belabor the obvious, the film rather loosely follows Shakespeare's “The Tempest,” and there are some gripping moments, as well as some hilarious ones. Good support by the rest of the cast, including Susan Sarandon (looking luscious), Molly Ringwald (having outgrown, hopefully, the likes of the execrable “Sixteen Candles”), and Raul Julia. “Moscow” was long too, but in the end you got the point, no matter how mushy and sentimental the presentation, At the end here, you just wanna say, "What's the POINT, Paul???"