Cleopatra
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Year Released: 1963
Rating: 1.0
Insufferable four-hour "epic" about Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor, getting the most out of her cleavage) and her romantic involvement with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) in the first half and her doomed affair with Marc Antony (Richard Burton) in the second half. The notoriously colossal budget is on full display, with the wonderful sets and costumes, but not even Taylor undergoing endless wardrobe changes or Burton breaking blood vessels can make this anything more than a bloated, inert and tragically belabored chore to endure, a shining example of Hollywood Excess Failing Miserably (not even the 1945 Caesar and Cleopatra with Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh is this tiring). Mankiewicz (who wrote such classics as A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve) thought it was a colossal failure ... and I see no reason to disagree with him.
