Watch One from the Heart For Free

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Watching Coppola's "One From The Heart" feels more like a selection of cheesy 80s music videos put behind Tom Waits decent soundtrack instead of a film. The plot is very strange and doesn't really go anywhere.

Those new wave filmmakers who revolutionised Hollywood during the 1970s were among the first generation of film geeks – people who got into the movies because they loved being at the movies. That's why, when people like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola started getting the cash and influence together to fund their own personal projects in the 1980s, they were liable to blow inordinate sums of money on homages to the cinema they had grown up on. It's odd, because these new wave directors and their work were in many ways the antithesis of classic Hollywood and its ways of doing things.In One for the Heart, writer-producer-director Coppola attempts homage to 1950s musicals like Singin' in the Rain and Guys and Dolls, swing-time romances in which city streets would be recreated in studios for that glitzily artificial look. However, rather than commission a score for the characters to sing, Coppola follows the trend of more recent Bob Fosse musicals, and One from the Heart's numbers are a non-diagetic commentary on the action. This is not a bad idea in itself, except that the music here is especially unmemorable and lacklustre. The songs sound like the end of a bad night out, with Tom Waits voice like the drawl of some predatory sex pest. This is not stuff you'll be singing on the way home.As a director Coppola seems to have mistaken the exaggerated look of the picture's influences for one of bluntness. Often the sets are drenched in coloured lighting, which sometimes changes within the shot, seemingly to highlight contrasts between the two leads and their environments. This and things like having the camera impossibly far back from the leads at their end of their first scene simply look obvious and overdone. On the other hand Coppola does at least display some musical sensitivity (as he did in the more conventional and very good Finian's Rainbow from 1968). The peak of the picture is during the extended music and dance sequence in the middle, in which Coppola shows incredible detail in the handling of the crowd, flashing various extras across the foreground in complement to the score.But there is little else one can say in One for the Heart's favour. The acting performances are mostly dull, and whenever they do broaden out a bit they verge on the silly. The story is hardly inspiring, and we never really sympathise with the characters because they are not made especially likable in the first place. The dialogue is lousy. Coppola had a great idea, but he did not follow it up with one single thought, and the picture works neither as a classic-style homage nor as an updated take on the genre. The musicals of old had a fairytale quality to them. This modern romantic drama, with its swearing, nudity and blazing rows, is mixed with the fake sets and ensemble dance routines like some bizarre and botched Frankenstein's monster. Coppola would now spend years trying to pay off his debts with routine features, and still has yet to rediscover the cinematic gold he struck in the 1970s, with which he had made his name and fortune.

What a lot of work went into a big time musical that just did not pay off. The recreation of Las Vegas in the big sound studios was well done with the brassy atmosphere and flashing lights giving us a riot of sound and colour. It's good to be experimental with the effects but sometimes it's better not to go too far. I found the singing voices superimposed on the airport noises were annoying to say the least. A lot of the images too are superimposed. A little might be acceptable but too much is bewildering.The theme of the film is summed up in the song "You don't know what you've got till you've lost it". A couple of lovers argue over nothing, break up, and go their own way seeking new partners. A vindictive act to teach each other a lesson.The beginning of the film and the end are the best parts with very little substance in between.Like the acting the songs were not particularly impressive and I really did not like the characters The failure of the film at the box office is not surprising. May be those reviewers who gave high recommendations saw themselves in the devastating break up between the lovers.I really cannot find very much to praise except perhaps the development of the atmosphere both visual and sound. All in all it's a costly experiment that went wrong and did not attract me in the least and I dare say many others.

My main problem with this film is that I found neither of the main characters to be remotely sympathetic. Pathetic, yes; sympathetic, not at all. Both are liars and cheats and seemingly have no real pride in themselves or what they want. In short, I was anxious for the film to be over pretty much right from the beginning. The fact that this disastrous, dysfunctional couple gets back together at the end is both predictable and infuriating. Garr's character, for all her insistence that "this is the end", finally breaks down to the cliché "love conquers all" BS that this movie attempts to foist on the viewer. Just awful. Visually, there are some interesting techniques used, not to mention some genuinely beautiful shots, but that wasn't enough to overcome my disappointment. However, the only truly redeeming aspect of this flick is Waits' soundtrack. It's the only thing that got me to sit through the entire thing. After all, T.W. can do no wrong.