This review was a challenge from Benn to Brian.
I will give someone $20 if they can explain to me what the hell this movie is about and what it is trying to say and what in God's name is Ewan McGregor doing in it. This movie makes no sense. I am sure it has something to do with art, but it beats the hell out of me what.

The movie is about a young Chinese woman named Nagiko, played by Vivian Wu (Joy Luck Club) who has had calligraphy painted on her body since she was a little girl. As she gets older she keeps looking for more calligraphers so she can continue to be painted on and have sex with some of them. She meets Jerome, Ewan McGregor (Star Wars I, II, and III) and she has a thing with him where we get to see his schlong in all of its glory. There is some kind of homoerotic thing with a Japanese editor but don't know why he is there or what his purpose is but hey, whatever.

Um, I guess the writer and director, Peter Greenaway, has some reason for putting this book onto film. If you ask me, it's so that he can have Vivian Wu and Ewan McGregor nude for most of the film. While that sounds like a good idea, its not. There appears to be no other point to this movie, what do nude bodies look like with paint on them and what does it mean?

Peter Greenaway has written and directed two of the worst movies ever put on film, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover, and this movie, all though for different reasons. First, there is no story other than the garbage I have tried to explain. Second, Greenaway edits the film where there is a picture within a picture scene, I guess so he can double the torture that he is giving you. Third, the sound editing is horrible. The beginning of the movie has a Buddhist chant but it is so loud that birds outside my window were collapsing from the pain. Then he goes into the movie and everybody is speaking almost at a whisper. Then he switches scenes and the music is so loud that the human body is forced into the fetal position until the noise stops. I am sure he made his choices for a reason, but to the layman, it doesn't make work.

This is just a horrible movie and I am amazed that people look at it and like it. Greenaway should never be allowed to touch film and he in fact should be a canvas, but the paint should be honey and he should have to lie in the middle of a desert with army ants eating him alive for this movie. Never, ever do a movie like this again. Greenaway should be forced to remove elephant dung from every zoo in the world for the next 20 years. Damn that Benn for making me watch this movie.

Brian - the Naked Gun