Going Postal
Going Postal
PG | 30 May 2010 (USA)
Going Postal Trailers

Moist von Lipwig is a con-man with a particular talent-- he is utterly unremarkable. When his execution is stayed in Terry Pratchett's remarkable Discworld, he must work off his debt to society as the land's head Postman. Things are not always as they seem, and soon Lipwig is delivering mail for his very life!

Reviews
Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall
WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
hjalsayegh Going postal is one of the more popular books in the discworld series and in this movie you find out why. The story is a stand alone about a con man trying to revive the postal service. All other characters from the discworld are cameos, magic and it's rules don't come into play. The movie has flaws. The effects used for both the banshee and werewolves were horrendous! In movie so old world and atmospheric those effects stood out like a sore thumb and I really, really, REALLY wish they were left on the cutting room floor. Angua who's a prominent character in the guards series was diluted to "blonde, pale, werewolf" Which just made me sad every time she popped up. What I liked however was the rest of the movie. It's charming, Atmospheric and the little details will get to you. The world feels lived in from the men's top hats being a bit worn from use to the women's sweeping skirts being muddy and dusty from.... well from sweeping the dirty streets!Seeing a few characters from other books cameo in this one made me smile (Everyone's favorite vampire photographer for the win!) I loved that they didn't shy away from Ludwig's past haunting him or how badly his confession to his lady love went. Those could have been written out for a more Hollywood classic tale.I don't think any of the movies are as good as the books. The writing style doesn't lend itself to the visual medium by the author's own admission. He wrote them to be books and mentioned that if he was writing for a movie then things would have been very different. I still enjoyed this as a movie and would recommend it even if you know nothing of the discworld.
MrVanilla People talk about the phenomenon of binge TV watching. I've been binge reading all of the Discworld books, all of which are on my shelf. That makes the second or third (or at least one fourth) time through. I had only seen the terrible "Color of Magic" and the worse "Hogfather" before, so had low expectations for this.Going Postal is true to the "look and feel" of the book. Of course, it doesn't stick to the plot, word for word. Of course, many of the characters are two dimensional. But then, the movie is made from pictures and the books are made from words. And words have power. It was a joy to watch. My wife didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did, but that was probably because I kept telling her the difference between the book and the movie. And pointing out the similarity ("Honey, did you notice the vampire photographer? That's great, he really didn't add to the movie story line, but in the Discworld series...." And we're still married.Spoiler: Viewers should be aware that the movie pays homage to old time movies in a couple of ways. One controversial way is to make the banshee into a replica of Nosferatu. I think this was a misstep, but a minor and intriguing one.
dccarles First off, I thought Going Postal was an above average Discworld novel. It flowed nicely, the character development was interesting, and of course it included Pratchett's trademark similes.This production, however, was sub-par. First, though, what they got right.The special effects were adequate. The golems looked like what you'd expect a guy wearing a hundred pounds of clay-coloured latex to look like, but the clacks towers were well done, as were the swirling letters in the post office. The sets and costumes, however, were excellent. The city streets lived and breathed, and the post office was wonderfully dark and decrepit. (Moist's Postmaster hat, I noticed, improved over time as the Post Office's fortunes improved.) The script benefited from streamlining the novel's plot somewhat. Just about everywhere the plot was changed, I could see why they did so. Much of Pratchett's wit made it into the dialogue, as well as more than a few good lines that weren't in the novel. But nothing, nay, nothing can make up for the acting. I don't blame the actors here: plainly they were directed to mug like Jim Carrey having a facial spasm. So much of what was funny in the novel was made utterly cringe-inducing by being overdone. Pratchettian humour works by understatement, by the characters taking themselves and what they do seriously. Of the characters played for comedic effect only Vetinari, as far as I could see, was played straight, and not coincidentally only he survived this massacre unscathed. It might be that the program was aimed at children, and this explains the awful, awful hamhandedness. But Pratchett is lost on apparent age level they were trying to pitch to. A terrible, terrible shame, after all the thought and effort that went into the production, that the delivery was muffed so badly.
poebelsmurfen Like it says in the title, I'm writing this review from a biased point of view. I read the book prior to watching the series, because I wanted to know the story before I saw the TV-series.And that ruined the whole TV-series for me.The series are interesting in the way that they put a face on the screen to the name of a character from a book. But that's about as far as the similarities go. Some movie adaptations of a book change a few insignificant points in order to make the movie more appealing to the masses, and also because some things don't work out as well in movie form as they do in a book form, which is fair enough. But twisting and skipping the most important plot elements all together is a trap which these TV-series have fallen into, resulting in a plain and uninteresting version of the story.As previously stated, I think the TV-series will only have a slight appeal to Discworld-fans, simply because the series put a face to the name of characters from the book. To people who do not like, or those who are not familiar to the Discworld books, I can't see any appeal to either of these groups in these TV-series.