{"id":51571,"date":"2021-12-08T17:52:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T22:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=51571"},"modified":"2021-12-08T17:52:52","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T22:52:52","slug":"house-of-gucci-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/12\/house-of-gucci-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"House of Gucci \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Ridley Scott\u2019s \u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d had an unimpressive 3rd<\/sup> place box office debut on what was frankly an unimpressive Thanksgiving weekend. A week has passed, I\u2019ve already reviewed \u201cEncanto\u201d at #1 and \u201cGhostbusters: Afterlife\u201d at #2, and no studio wants to open anything new in the notoriously-abysmal first weekend in December. So the still-#3 \u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d is up for review. Is it as unimpressive as its numbers? In a way, it is. The film is nearly three hours long and didn\u2019t knock my socks off, so disappointment is bound to play a role in my opinion. But at the same time, I can\u2019t say that it\u2019s some sort of spectacular flop, or even a flop at all, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            Lady Gaga stars as Patrizia Reggiani, heiress to a pathetic Italian trucking empire who yearns for something more. She finds that \u201cmore\u201d in the form of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), heir to the sprawling fashion empire. Aspiring lawyer Maurizio has no desire to go into the family business, and in fact he is happy to forfeit his inheritance after his father Rudolfo (Jeremy Irons) disapproves of Patrizia and makes him choose between love and money. The couple is poor-but-happy, with Maurizio going to work for Patrizia\u2019s father and sneaking in romantic rendezvous in a trailer. One romantic scene could have cut away after some smooching, but it stays with the two\u2026 longer than necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Eventually, through either genuine affection or playing a long con, Patrizia and Maurizio make nice with Rudolfo and are accepted into the Gucci empire. At the top is Maurizio\u2019s uncle Aldo, who welcomes Maurizio into the company with open arms, having found a way to keep the brand in the family without having to hand it over to his incompetent son Paolo (Jared Leto). But where Maurizio sees loving family members, Patrizia sees obstacles to taking over Gucci for herself. She\u2019s destined for greatness, her psychic Pina (Salma Hayek) tells her so. It\u2019s just a matter of removing Aldo from power, getting Paolo to sell his shares of the company, and taking care of Maurizio. The progression of the marriage will determine exactly what it means to \u201ctake care of\u201d Maurizio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Given all the ambition and betrayal (not to mention crime), it\u2019s hard not to see \u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d as a sort of \u201cGodfather\u201d movie. Veteran Pacino is like Michael Corleone in Part III \u2013 wizened and prominent, but also frail and losing his grip on power. Driver is like Michael in Part I \u2013 smart and wanting to follow his own path, but ultimately sucked into the family business. And Leto, in a comparison everyone is rightfully making, is Fredo \u2013 desperate to prove his worth, yet so disastrous that he can only dig himself deeper at every opportunity. Also, he\u2019s balding. Granted, so was the real Paolo Gucci, but you can\u2019t tell me there isn\u2019t at least a little bit of John Cazale in that look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d makes some questionable decisions, like the aforementioned sex scene, giving Gaga and Leto a lot of leeway with their Italian accents, and skipping over major chunks of the family\u2019s chronology. But it\u2019s a fairly investing story. I was reclining in my theater seat and never once did I feel the need to bang my head against the upright one next to me. And of course there are lavish costumes \u2013 even the eyesores that Paolo designs are clearly the result of painstaking effort. Between this, \u201cCruella,\u201d \u201cSpencer,\u201d and next week\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d this will be a good year for the Best Costume Design category at the Oscars. As for the movie as a whole, I\u2019ll give it a mild recommendation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d is rated R for language, some sexual content, and brief nudity and violence. Its running time is 158 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             Ridley Scott\u2019s \u201cHouse of Gucci\u201d had an unimpressive 3rd place box office debut on what was frankly an unimpressive Thanksgiving weekend. A week has passed, I\u2019ve… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":51572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[937],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51574,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51571\/revisions\/51574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}