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Reviews
Moll Flanders (1996)
It should have been good!
This movie is only barely similar to the book, "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders" written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1722. So if you've read the book don't worry about it spoiling the movie for you. In fact the movie is spoiled all by itself. What a waste of time.
Yes, the cast is good and I think they did as much with this movie as they could. A story like this one is takes skillful telling and this seemed to be put together no better than Frankenstein's monster. Just one scene attached to another from beginning to end.
Even in the book Moll Flanders was not a sympathetic character but I believe they do try to make her one in the movie. They failed. Moll in the movie flows from one moment to the next without ever really taking charge of her life, very unlike the character in the book.
The entire movie is no better than the average television soap opera. Characters display extreme emotions that didn't seem realistic and too often without us really understanding why. Groundwork was not laid for many of the scenes and so the movie left me wondering 'why did they do that' for about two seconds. And then I realized I really didn't care.
A good cast and a movie based on a good book, it really should have been so much better.