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Such a frustrating disappointment

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is last of the three made for TV movies with Hercules Poirot. The movie follows the plot of the novel quite faithfully. The novel is really good. Unfortunately , this movie isn't.The setting has been transferred to Acapulco and the character of Mr Satterthwaite was replaced by Poirot regular Hastings. The characters have been Americanized. I think it hurt the production. It doesn't feel like Agatha Cristie movie at all. The original story is set in England and on the Riviera. It doesn't feel right to put Poirot in Acapulco at all.The story is good , however the completely bland direction destroys it. It was rather easy to spot the murderer (not like in the book !) The suspects in "Murder In Three Acts" seem bland and undifferentiated .There are no really interesting characters. None of the supporting cast have characters worth remembering or caring about and that is the fatal flaw of this version The characters are very poorly defined. Poirot is reduced here to an old man, without any real elegance left. Charles Cartwright here is just an aging playboy instead of intelligent and noble actor.When it comes to acting only Ustinov deserves some praise, even if is hamming it up in certain scenes. The rest is mediocre with two exceptions : Jonathan Cecil as Hastings and Tony Curtis as Charles Cartwright. Cecil is annoying and unlikable. The bigger problem is with Curtis. His role is so important for the movie and Curtis is simply terrible. His character was so complex and likable in the book. Here ? It's a tragedy. REALLY , REALLY bad acting from Curtis.I can't find anything good in this movie. Better watch Poirot TV series or "Death on the Nile" or "Evil under the sun" with Ustinov if you want a good Agatha Christie movie. I give it 1/10.

Having not seen this adaptation for a very long time I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I do however have a problem with updating Poirot to the eighties - he just doesn't fit, as a character into these surroundings. It works slightly better in 'Dead Man's Folly' because the 'English country house' atmosphere is relatively timeless but in LA and Mexico the eighties intrude too much and both Poirot and Hastings seem out of place. Ustinov is entertaining as always but I continue to have problems with Jonathan Cecil as Hastings who is even more of a gormless oaf in this movie than in his previous two appearances - I wish he would put that useless notepad away! The supporting cast are all OK though no-one is particularly outstanding. To be fair though, even in the book these are not the most interesting group of Christie suspects. I thought Tony Curtis made quite a good job of Charles Cartwright but again this was not an exceptional performance. It was sensible to change (slightly) the motive for the murders - the principal motive from the book would not have been very compelling in the liberated eighties! This movie is a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours but I suspect that David Suchet and his team will make a better job of it when they come to make it.

So bland is this adaptation and so embarrassingly awful the dialogue that I feel all my blood has drained away. To say it has been 'Americanised' is rather insulting to Americans, however it is fair to say that it has been reduced down to the Lowest Common Denominator of American culture. Any subtlety, wit or literary value has been stripped out lest it confuse the low-brow knuckle-draggers of middle America. Witness the way that characters are forced to endure that most excruciating of all devices - the completely implausible and unnecessary exposition of character/plot/history details to another character (the cheapest and laziest way of filling in such details - aimed at an audience considered too dim to pick up necessary facts from a more sophisticated rendition of them).It's just as well that Ustinov's portrayal of Poirot includes a more-or-less constant 'bad smell' facial expression, given the pong given off by this script! I am sure that you can actually see Ustinov literally shuddering as he has to endure some of this dialogue. The comment about this feeling like a really third-rate episode of 'Murder She Wrote' - with all the cheap shortcuts, rice-paper-thin characterisations and contrived, cringe-worthy, painful dialogue aimed at the terminally stupid - is spot on. Euuurghh ... still feel dirty having watched it!

Having read all of the Agatha Christie books, I have to say that David Suchet was the ultimate Hercule Poirot as written by Agatha Christie. But my favorite Poirot, having nothing whatsoever to do with either Poirot or what Ms. Christie wrote, is Peter Ustinov. It always reminds me of what someone once said about Zero Mostel in "Fiddler on the Roof" - "He's fabulous...but what he does has nothing to do with Fiddler." Ustinov is a sheer delight in every way - he's funny, he's charming, he's warm, he's relaxed - all things that, frankly, Agatha's Hercule just wasn't."Murder in Three Acts" is a slapped together TV movie without the usual star power except for Tony Curtis and several TV actors - the gorgeous Emma Samms, who was a big TV star in the '80s, Diana Muldaur, Concetta Tomei, Dana Elcar, Nicholas Pryor, and several others. The characters have been Americanized, and though set in Acapulco, aside from a few exterior shots, you don't get much atmosphere.Though the story is very interesting (it is, after all, based on an Agatha Christie novel), the production has a certain blandness to it. You know there's a problem when Diana Muldaur announces that she and the Tony Curtis character did "Private Lives" together. Now, I happen to be very fond of Tony Curtis - I did research for his autobiography, he's on the cover of a book I wrote, I found him a very charming man - but come on, PRIVATE LIVES? With that New York accent? I don't think so. He does, however, look really fabulous, and if you watch the scenes in his house carefully, you'll catch some fantastic photos of him on the wall.It's an okay way to pass the time, and the plot is intriguing, Tony's Tony, Emma's beautiful and sexy, Nicholas Pryor is funny, and Ustinov is - well, he's Poirot even if he's not what Dame Agatha had in mind.