SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Theo Robertson This is a family movie that was broadcast on my local ITV station at 1.00 am a couple of nights ago . This might be a strange decision on the part of the schedulers but THE REAL HOWARD SPITZ is a rather strange film , strange in the way it doesn't want to upset its audience . Come on there's nothing kids like more than sadism and that's why Roald Dahl was such a popular author for children . It also explains why DOCTOR WHO was such a successful show across the world . In this screenplay you're just dying for pulp fiction author to do something nasty to the kids but this doesn't happen . I'm not advocating child abuse but to see Howard Spitz lose his rag at the little ones would have made the movie rather better . Can you imagine how much worse KINDERGARTEN COP would have been if the producers had gone all PC ? I mean if you're making a movie centered around a children's author who hates children shouldn't the story show and not tell ? Much of the problem lies with director Vadim Jean and you do get the feeling he doesn't know how to handle the material which is bad news for the movie . As someone previously noted the soundtrack is haphazard and Kelsey Grammar is very wooden . I guess he was trying to play it dead pan just like in that show he's famous for but it fails to work here and there's many scenes with quiet ridiculous camera angles which seem unintentional but which are very distracting . But at the end of the day the main problem remains that the potential is ruined because no one wanted to offend the audiences sensibilities

black_dagger I'd be the first to admit that, at times, this had a preety corny storyline. Some of the jokes are predictable, and some scenes seem longer then they had to be.But, taking these minor points away, you have a great film.The acting from the adult cast was acceptable (except from kelsey grammar, who, as in all his roles, played it perfectly). The acting from the child cast was remarkable. I could only name you one GOOD child star (And i'm definitely not talking about Mary Kate or Ashley...) but after watching this, i may have to change my outlook that all child screen actors are hopeless.This is a great film...there are no explosions, hardly any swearing, and the death scene was strangely cut out...so you can see why this may not have been well received. This isn't a life altering film, but i like it anyway...

MarioB Sometimes funny comedy that reminds me of the Shirley Temple pictures of the 1930's. Not great, but quite O.K. for adults, but not really for kids. It's a B movie. But I prefer this kind of B movie than big major Hollywood disgusting pictures with violence, guns and stupidity.

Rene Schmidig I had to see this on the British Airways plane. It was terribly bad acting and a dumb story. Not even a kid would enjoy this. Something to switch off if possible.