A Monkey Movie Review

So this is the film Dustin Hoffman chose to direct.  Yes.  It's true.  He is responsible for this, this film that has more wrinkles than the scrotal sacks of one hundred old men.  But that's the least of this film's problems.

The film is about a group of ancient musicians and opera singers who live in an old folks home.  They put on a gala every year to raise money to keep their impossibly lavish senior citizen's home open.  Into this tight knit world comes a woman who is supposedly Britain's greatest female opera singer.  They want her to be in the gala but she doesn't want to do it.  After a but of flirting and conniving, they convince her to do it.

Here's what's wrong with it:

• It takes place in an alternate earth where everyone is wild about opera.  Old people, young people, everybody loves opera.  Except in the real world, that's bullshit.  I'm not saying that people don't love opera, I'm saying they don't get excited and shit themselves over it they way people in this film do.
• The entire film they build up Maggie Smith's character as the greatest opera singer who ever lived.  And then guess what?  SHE DOESN'T FUCKING SING.  NOT EVEN A NOTE.  SHE DOESN'T EVEN FAKE IT.
• Billy Connolly is by no stretch of any imagination an opera singer. 
• The whole thing is not believable.  None of it.  The home is too lavish, the characters are too pat, the dramatic interpersonal relationships are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

I'm not saying it's awful, I'm saying this vanity project of Hoffman's is not worth your time.