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Reviews
Enemy Mine (1985)
Regarding the sudden ending...
Note that the ending used in the film is *NOT* the ending Longyear wrote in the novella. I am firmly convinced that it was changed for one of two, equally bad, reasons: 1) Someone felt compelled to end with a big action sequence, rather than with cultural insight and an uplifting message.
2) Some studio executive, upon reading the script, said "The title is Enemy Mine. Where's the mine? I'm not approving this project until I see a mine." The novella is definitely better than the film... but up until they take that made-for-Hollywood left turn, the film is a pretty decent adaptation... more faithful to a classic than most such attempts.
Go Ask Alice (1973)
Ineffective
I saw Go Ask Alice as a high school student, shortly after it was made. Admittedly I was a relatively sophisticated film viewer, but my reaction to it was that it was a weak effort. I found the acting wooden and the script heavy-handed. One of the scenes where the girls discover something that shocks them completely failed to shock me, perhaps because I wasn't either young enough or narrow-minded enough to find it more than mildly surprising.
I would call it a period piece -- not as over-the-top as some of the more hysterical what's-wrong-with-our-kids efforts generally classified as Exploitation Films, but unfortunately not far short of that. It has the same sort of "one little slip from the straight and narrow and you're sliding toward hell" assumptions as many other morality plays, and that actually weakens it as a propaganda/educational (take your pick) effort.
Maybe the book was better. Or maybe you needed to be younger (and/or female?) and see it before "the 60's" (which actually ran partly into the 70's) started fading. Or maybe you needed to be predisposed toward the lesson it was trying to teach. But as a film (never mind as a message) it just didn't work for me. If I'd had any interest in drugs (which I never have), I don't think this would have changed my mind... and it didn't succeed in convincing me that it was even a good composite picture, never mind a portrait of an individual.
I will admit I have not viewed it since then. But since part of what others have discussed has been how it affected them, I felt a comment on how it failed to affect me was appropriate.
Just one ex-kid's reaction. "This is the kind of movie that is liked by the kind of people who like this kind of movie. I'm not one of them."