Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

[Kev1n]

I've never read the book. The movie started out really weird, with A LOT of sniffling, with a really perverse protagonist that I just disliked. It turned me off from the beginning, but it became better, and right before the end I was ready to call this an above-average movie. Then came the ending -- an absolutely stunningly, flabbergastingly stupid ending.

People bowing down to him, mass orgy, cannibalsm... all because of a scent?

Total 'WTF' moment.

[XerXis]

In my opinion it's a brilliant movie (based on even more brilliant book) which excells in capturing a very dark mood. You can almost smell the stench coming from the screen

[rickbman]

I wrote a review on everyonesacritic.net awhile back... http://everyonesacritic.net/movie_review.asp?ratingid=629457

So there are some movies that when I watch them I know exactly how I feel about them, and then some that I have no feeling about one way or another after I watch them. However, this is one of those movies that after watching I am totally unsure of how I feel about it. For the most part I really liked the movie, but there were a few things with it that kind of bothered me that kept it from being a great film. Mostly the tone of the film seemed inconsistent, which may have been intentional but I didn?t care for it. It also had some bad performances from some otherwise really great actors.

I was really getting into the movie during the first three quarters of the movie; it had this really dark and mysterious tone that really drew me in. There was a little bit of humor here and there which was good, but over all it was very dark and realistic tone for the most part. It was obviously a little over the top but I was buying it; it didn?t seem all that far fetched to me. Then towards the end of the movie it really started to feel kind of silly to me. It no longer had that dark tone to it, and it started to feel less and less ?real? to me. This is not normally something I would pan a movie for but the change in tone was not done well at all. It just seemed to suddenly switch gears from dark and mysterious to over the top and silly. It just didn?t really work for me.

The one other thing that bothered me in this film were the performances by Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman; two otherwise great actors. Dustin Hoffman really just seemed like he showed up on set one day and said ?Ok, let?s get this over with so I can get my check and go home.? I?m not going to nit pick about his accent or anything like I?ve seen in other reviews, but his overall performance just seemed to really lack any sort of effort. Alan Rickman also just seemed to be going through the motions and not really trying to give any sort of performance. It really just felt like both of these actors just didn?t care at all.

There were some good things about the film. As I stated before I really enjoyed the first three quarters of the movie. I was really getting into the suspense and mystery of it all. I thought the story was pretty original and interesting. A wonderful job was done with the details of the set design and the cinematography was beautiful as well. Overall I don?t think it was a bad film, it just was very underwhelming and not something I really would have any desire to see again. Although, I?d still be interested to see what Tom Tykwer does next.

[Rob2687]

What a weird and creepy movie... and just when you think it couldn't possibly get any weirder...

That must have been a crazy day on set.

Too over the top for me. Who ever wrote this has something not right in the noggin. Maybe the book was a hit but it didn't work well in movie form. Cinematography was nice but it was a creepy story.

2.5/5

Edited May 4, 2007 by Rob2687

[Lycan]

I saw the movie a while ago, at start it was quite an interesting story, though the ending was very very weird :s.

[Julius Caro]

Up until the last scenes I thought the movie was OK. But the ending (like the last half hour , probably a bit more) was absolutely boring and totally senseless. I want that period of my life back! It couldn't suck more.