The Last Sign was like one of those Lady's Gothics cheezy paperbacks of the 1960s, or a Harlequin Romance with ghost added.
The mysterious "signs" throughout the film were void of suspense or meaning. Margo Kidder as the eccentric who believes in ghosts was the best character, but didn't contribute much to the story.
Kidder really deserves the chance to play edgy characters in hard-hitting strange films, as she has aged into the incarnation of an aesthetically eerie wackjob capable of holding viewer attention when she's on the screen. I'd like to see her play something disturbing rather than trivial. There are few roles even for aging actresses, let alone for peculiar aging actresses, but if she ever decided to got the Bette Davis route of horror-maven as the last act of her career, she'd be a goddess for the genre.
Tim Roth as the ghost of Andie MacDowell's dead husband is a wasted presence permitted to do little more than appear silently & mug. One would think the ghost of an abusive drunkard would carry some suspense, but he just wants to be forgiven, the wussiest ghost of all time. MacDowell herself is pretty but a completely wooden actor with a perpetual facial registration somewhere between sound asleep & stoned.
Samuel Le Bihan as the mysterious romance-novel-style hunky love interest was potentially adequately cast. Unfortunately his voice was badly looped either so that he or more likely some second-rate voice-over hack could speak like a race track announcer, doing away with Le Behan's French accent. We'll never know, but his performance might have been passable if he'd been able to speak with his own voice.
It all pulls into a non-climax parking space of happily ever after, boring to extreme. Wasn't Andie MacDowell's going somewhere before she did Muppets From Space & all down hill from there? She should accept some sitcom role & accept that she's a hair-dye spokeswoman not an actor.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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