Word: floundering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This sort of vapid speech demands to be performed as parody. Yet Guckenheimer has not delineated the humorous moments from the serious ones. The characters flounder in search of a voice; some scenes lack dramatic viewpoint to the verge of soap-opera tedium...
...general, the rest of the cast flounder uncomfortably in their roles, unable to do much with such a bad script. Mark O'Donnell as Fritz, the student who makes the mistake of leaving his betrothed alone too long, is even more inept and ineffectual than the part calls for. Derek Pajaczkowski is no better as the loud and boorish Buttress, straining too hard to produce minimal comic effects...
...Louis catch flounder in Gill nets. April through September; then it's cod season and they alternate between the nets and trawling with baited hooks. Hooks are a last resort since the bait is expensive, the method laborious. A day often lasts from five in the morning until seven at night, and they must go out every day. Nets are left out for a day, then hauled into the boat and reset. A day only lasts until one in the afternoon, and the day in between they mend nets or work on the boat...
...have been the point-a naturalistic musical in a fairy-tale setting. But none of the cast is either energetic or winning enough to make that interpretation believable. Even the few with musical training-like Kahn or Eileen Brennan, who appears as a crony of Shepherd's-flounder badly. Bogdanovich directs with such headlong uncertainty that obviously satiric numbers (Give Me a Primitive Man) come to look more like self-parody. The sets and costumes are of such resplendent ugliness that they go beyond campiness...
Then there's the problem of looking for power in oneself. Women here flounder in a well of insecurity when it comes to career prospects. They lack the role models to show them that what they want can be achieved. Radcliffe has produced only so many Elizabeth Holtzmans, More prominent is the spectre of swarms of their predecessors fading into the oblivion of housewifery. Take some fear of failure, and a dash of fear of success and you have a recipe for female sexism...