Venus

A Boring movie. The acting is fine, but that cannot make this movie good. Toenail humor does not work. Shame on Peter O'Toole. If Hulk Hogan had done this film, viewers would admit it sucks bigtime. But, Peter "deserves" an award. He is a good actor. Yep. The cast is fine and they have a few scenes that are worth seeing. Some of the dialog, especially between Peter and his old sho-biz buds, are laughable. Unfortunately those few scenes are like strawberries in a garbage can. The totality of this film is not entertaining. If you want to see three old men having fun with their years, watch Going in Style with George Burns. The Three Stooges did not have to resort to proctologist finger closeups and needles being inserted into skin to get big laughs. Watchability is what this movie lacks. There is no way a group of friends will get together on a yearly basis to watch this poor excuse for entertainment. In the old days of Elvis movies and Gene Autry movies, the plot revolved around a song that led to a fight and a fight that led to a song. This movie has an attempted joke that leads to a disgusting moment which leads to a close up of someone's yellow teeth and then someone's foot. Peter O'Toole looks too sick here to be playing the part of a patient. Put a sheet over him and get it over with. I believe Peter could still do a really good movie. He could do something exciting. He could do real comedy again as he has done before. He will need makeup and hair and a stunt double, of course. If catheters were funny, we would see more of them onstage in Las Vegas. The Emperor has no clothes. I hope this is not Peter's last hurrah. Boo. Tom Willett

I came to this film with high expectations, having been led to believe that it dealt bravely and honestly with sexuality amongst old people. I found the acting excellent. However, the behaviour of the people in the film was frequently tawdry and exploitative. If a younger man had been shown behaving as did the character played by Peter O'Toole he would, I believe, have been recognised as the moral incompetent that he is. To expect us to sympathise with this, simply because he is old is a form of inverse ageism. The same applied to the responses of the so-called "friends" who, when he needed assistance when he was ill, were noticeable for their unwillingness to help. Again, these responses are not rendered acceptable because of the age of the characters concerned. If, on the other hand, we were supposed to find them all uncongenial - why bother at all? The transformation of the young women I found completely implausible on the evidence we were given. Disappointing.

Films about older men with much, much younger women can be good. For example, Nick Nolte in The Good Thief or Michael Caine in The Quiet American. Better still, in real life no man ever ought miss having a relationship with a girl 35 or 40 years younger; nor should a young girl ever miss the experience of involvement with an older man. In the case of the Nick Nolte and Michael Caine films, each man remained a truly interesting person whose matured character would be like a magnet to a beautiful young woman regardless of whether she's tired of the immature airheads her own age. Not so with Peter O'Toole in VENUS. Herein O'Toole has evolved into a bored-with-himself doddering old geezer who's more apt to drool half his meal down his shirt than find a believable way of charming a 20 year old. Picture Uncle Junior on The Sopranos chasing after Lindsey Lohan and you get the idea. While O'Toole is shrewd enough to play-the-sympathy of the young woman, his taking another guy's toenail clipping out of his pocket in a public place and waving it around is not the makings of a sly fox. Ugh! Many scenes are alleged to be charming and insightful in VENUS, and therein is the self-delusion of the filmmaker. VENUS is a disgusting movie. The waste can is the place for it.

I'd give this unpleasant film a miss. It is extraordinary how such a good combination of ingredients - excellent actors, filmed in English, in England - can produce such a nasty result. The plot doesn't hang together well. Various ideas are brought up in a scene only to be discarded completely, with no particular relevance to anything. The film is maninly an attack on old age and it aims as many humiliations at the elderly as it possibly can. The gratuitous nastiness extends to all sorts of situations - there's an impossibly callous and cruel surgeon, an unconvincingly brutal boy friend and many others. Peter O'Toole acts brilliantly, of course, but it is all such a waste. The film is maudlin and mawkish at the same time as being nasty - an unusual combination, I suppose, but that's no reason to waste time seeing this. The girl acts fairly well too, but, again, to little point. Here character isn't well developed, and certainly not pleasant enough to warrant any attention from an old man. She is unconvincing on many levels. I'm sure, that with a decent script, and an interesting plot, she could be a reasonably good actress, but this would be thin material for even a top flight actress. There are some feeble attempts at humour. Probably the best example is; 'You know what they say about blind prostitutes?' 'You've got to hand it to them'. Brilliant wit, eh? And that's about as good as it gets.

It is sad when such a great actor as Peter O'Toole seemingly will end his days in such terrible trash as this mess of a picture. The film suffers from a lousy script filled with enough filth to keep the vulgar minded happy! We suffer through vulgar scenes such as a doctor preparing his gloved hand for a rectal examine and O'Toole's legs twinging as he proceeds with the examination, making me wonder whether the director actually enjoys his rectal examines since he filmed the scene with such detail and precision. This film is a jewel as an example of what is wrong with the culture of today. If it is watched as an expose on what our society has fallen to, it is bad enough. If on the other hand it is watched for enjoyment worse still. O'Toole does a great job, as usual, bringing the dirty old man character to life but little else makes this film worth watching. One has to wonder why O'Toole would lower himself to such films. Perhaps it is true that film roles for older people are lacking but it would have been much better if he retired gracefully from the screen then to be seen in such miserable fare as this.

This immature slice of geriatric epiphany was largely overrated when it came out, mainly due to the lead being film legend Peter O'Toole. Critics, and even the Academy awards, must have mistook this manipulative and silly little tale for something entirely greater. While Venus does have some potent themes which deal in lust and mortality, Hanif Kureishi's script is just too showy for any real effect to take hold. His plot revolves around O'Toole's late-life inspiration, as he sleazily attempts to win over a young nurse (newcomer Jodie Wittaker, doing little more then filling out a pair of jeans nicely). This was no Lolita, and the under-explored dynamics of their relationship does little to illuminate anything, opting to artfully exploit the premise instead. Many have praised the script's handling of this potentially scummy plot line, insisting Venus has far more class and substance then it's raunchy foreground would suggest, but I saw very little indication of that. Rather, the film serves to highlight one dirty old man in all of his crusty glory as we watch, unbelievably, as this young young lady begins to offer more of herself to him. While not plagued with the indecency that would have felt more pronounced had the project belonged to more sinister minds, Venus is little more then the vapid glorification of an old horn-dog having one final hurrah. What is particularly annoying is how O'Toole and his on-screen elderly buddy continuously mug the camera with an awkward "rawness" that I suppose was instilled for comedic value and also for appealing to a younger demographic but only came across as unrealistic and laughably off. It is as if director Roger Michell, fearing the small box-office turn around, had his lead utter ridiculously foul-mouthed phrases in order to catch some tiny spark of edginess. Instead, these lines come off as painfully self-aware and completely counter-productive in proving to us that these old men are still hip. Venus may have enough appeal to lure a certain crowd, as it had certainly pulled a fast one over many of our respected film critics, but the majority of this film felt like a tedious chore. Rare moments of cinematic sincerity occur, and when they do one will only realize what potential the film could have had if calibrated with a little more finesse. Rather, Venus let's the venerated O'Toole celebrate 50 years in the biz by having him gently chew the scenery, with dentures. His much touted performance, masterfully intuitive yet still somehow stale and predictable, was overstated from stature.

I found the film to be exceedingly superficial and vacuous. All the hype about O'Tolle getting an Oscar for basically playing himself, I found to be nothing more then studio hype and wishful thinking. Kureishi script is all over the place. They try to do a bit of the travelogue thing that worked so well in "Lost in Translation" but totally fails here because it's just done to do it, to change the scenery. There is also a vague attempt to knock off Shaw with a "My Fair Lady" spin, which once again is just superficial. Why they made the story into a blue collar piece of depression when they could have made it a joyful celebration of old age through sensuality and vitality, I can't figure out. If you want to get very depressed about old age this Winter, by all means go see it!

One of the several sad things about the so-called comedy-drama "Venus" is that Peter O'Toole (as Maurice, a cadaverous and pedophiliac dirty old actor) gives the world a definitive portrait of a character to whom the description "looks like death chewin' on a cracker" might be applied – albeit while chewing on the appendages of a young laddette of ill-defined character played by Jodie Whittaker. While the broad intended themes of "Venus" seem to be May-December romantic attraction; the Pygmalion-like uplifting of a downhearted young woman by a caring mentor; the nature of mature love; the healing effects of time; and the eternal nature of eros – the finished work seems disjointed and populated by poorly developed characters behaving oddly. A horrid and distasteful mish-mash of bad intentions gone worse, the script is the product of Hanif Kureishi, the Anglo-Pakistani boomer (born in 1954) and "cult-novelist" whose oeuvre - largely characterized by a broad spectrum of explicit sexual activity - runs the gamut from interracial gay love story (My Beautiful Laundrette) through the reportedly autobiographical tale of a man who leaves his wife and children (Intimacy) in favor of an anonymous fellatrice (live, on camera!), to more recent work exploring trans-generational sexual attraction (The Mother – between a woman in her 70s and her thirty-something lover – and Venus – thankfully avoiding any explicit sex between a 70-something man who is near death's door and the rather ill-defined young woman in her 20s in whom he takes a prurient interest.) As one in the eighth decade of his life, I can assure others that Mr Kureishi offers no meaningful insight into the nature of aging, the aged, or their sensuality. The actors do a workmanlike job of trying to breathe life into an abysmal script (act, Peter, act!) – but the lighting is Stygian, the screenplay improbable, the continuity irregular and the dialog – other than the gratuitous obscenities - forgettable. In sum, Venus is an abysmal melange wherein "Lost in Translation" meets "My Fair Lady", with a heavy dose of Mr. Chips as played by Claire Quilty. If you're looking for fascinating insight into the nature of love, sexuality and redemption as written by a brilliant British author go see Edward Norton in the current production of the "The Painted Veil", adapted from Somerset Maugham's story. For an overblown exercise in geriatric farce – overburdened with obscenity and without a trace of authenticity – see "Venus".

Peter O'Toole is considered by many to be the "best actor in the world". And he has been for many decades. Those aren't my words but the words of Anthony Hopkins. Russell Crowe and Martin Scorsese agree. And he is fantastic in this small country independent film. I have seen all of his films and this one along with The Manor ranks among the best. In both, he exhibits the phenomenal wit and timing of a master and knows more about delivering a punchline than anyone I have ever seen. And just listening to his booming voice always keeps everyone honest. In both this film and THE MANOR in which he plays Greta Scacchi's husband, he is a magnet for your attention and your eyes. He totally dominates. WoolyMonkey

Venus is a dreadful piece of trash that strips Peter O' Toole of any remaining dignity except for going out as an old age porno star -- if there is any dignity implied in that -- and there just may be with the postmodern directorial sentiments of urban schlock and shock value writ large across the screen. From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Shakespeare to foul mouth swearing, from Venus -- love of the mind, not the eye -- to the total fixation on the body, from prostitution to more prostitution, this movie does not let up. In the end, old age delivers on bad taste. The movie is about a shallow old lech of an actor who is taken up by the physical beauty of a young woman. He is a hedonist who can quote Shakespeare but not understand the lines he recites. Peter O'Toole plays the dirty old man who has nothing to say to the soul of a young woman: a superficial narcissist who has dumped his wife, swears a lot and is left with nothing but a young woman who prostitutes herself to him. Touching and that is what he is allowed to do to her. Peter O' Toole will go out in a pathetic splendor if Hollywood gives him an Oscar for this crap. The most disturbing aspect of this movie is allowing a 14-year old to watch it. It was rated 14a and there are many disturbing scenes that are not fit for minors.