The Caveman’s Valentine
Product Description
Detached from the world misunderstood juilliard-trained genius romulus ledbetter finds a frozen corpse outside his manhattan cave. Determined to solve this heinous homicide he risks the remaining shreds of his sanity for the sake of justice. Can a man who no one believes prove a crime? Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 08/24/2004 Starring: Samuel L. Jackson Run time: 106 minutes Rating: R Director: Kasi LemmonsAmazon.com
Samuel L. Jackson gives a virtuoso performance in this intensely visual suspense film. Jackson stars as Romulus Ledbetter, a brilliant musician whose mental demons have driven him onto the streets. When Ledbetter finds a murdered man outside the cave he calls home one morning, he is compelled to find the real killer. While interesting enough to hold the viewer’s attention, the mystery of The Caveman’s Valentine is a distant third to Jackson’s performance and the film’s sumptuous visuals. The film is gorgeously shot, and lights and abstract images are effectively used to show Romulus’s beautiful but tormented inner world. While the plot does take a silly leap of logic or two, Romulus’s illness and the strain it puts on his family are sensitively and realistically handled. His all-too-real run-ins with his policewoman daughter are nicely contrasted with his visions of his ex-wife, who serves as a combination of Greek chorus and muse. If one is willing to suspend a little disbelief here and there, this picture is well worth a look. –Ali Davis
The Caveman’s Valentine was one of the weirdest, strangest, and confusing films I have ever seen. I knew one minute into this movie that I was going to regret paying the $3.69(which is a rip-off in itself) at Blockbuster that I did.
Frankly, I didn’t really know what was going on throughout the whole movie. There are things that I have mulled over after watching it, and I still don’t have a clue what they meant. I know the color green was a significant part of the movie, but why? The director did not explain this to me. And if he did, then it was in some kind of subliminal message.
And why people are calling this movie a visual stunner is beyond me. There was nothing great about the Cinematography in my opinion. And that is basically the only reason I rented this movie. That and Samuel L. Jackson is in it.
The Caveman’s Valentine is everything that I expected in the form of craziness and oddness, but it failed in my eyes in the directing department and the overall writing of the story. 2 Stars
Rating: 2 / 5
The Caveman’s Valentine
Having consistently enjoyed Samuel L. Jackson in his wide variety of acting roles, I truly expected great things from this movie. I’m sorry to say that I was incredibly disappointed. This film tried to give the impression that it was saying a great deal, when in reality it said nothing. Its overuse of intensely graphic imagery simply tried to hide a very weak story. It struck me as a movie that would win raves at a film festival or a film school, drawing descriptions such as “how deep!” or “it’s multi-layered” from people who felt that this was the right thing to say. Unfortunately, I’m neither a film student nor was I at a festival. I simply wanted to enjoy a movie. My biggest regret is not giving up hope on the movie. I kept convincing myself that I should stick with it because there had to be a satisfying ending. There wasn’t. This movie, unfortunately, feels very long and to me was a total disappointment. If your idea of a good time is a few hours of super-artsy fluff, then this is the perfect movie. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Jackson as an actor, but I think he made a mistake with this movie.
Rating: 1 / 5
The Caveman’s Valentine
This movie is so bad, so silly – it’s incoherent, the characters are barely 2 dimensional, the lead (caveman) alternates between cartoon lunacy & amateur sleuth, the plot must have come from a mail-order do-it-yourself writers school. I normally have enormous admiration for Samuel Jackson, but lord knows what got into him to make this bomb…
Rating: 1 / 5
The Caveman’s Valentine
Like most everyone who saw EVE’S BAYOU, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of Kasi Lemmon’s follow-up film. Unfortunately, very little of what made EB such a critical and commercial success is evident in CAVEMAN’S VALENTINE. Not even another winning performance by Samuel L Jackson could save this pretentious clunker of a film. The book on which this screenplay was based is ludicrious enough, yet it seems like Lemmons to go out of her way to make the unbelievable premise even more ridiculous. There was simply no motivation for schizophrenic Romulus to become a crime fighter and there is simply no dramatic pull to keep the audience interested. Nothing in this film is firmly grounded, giving the one dimesional characters no where to go. What a waste of time.
Rating: 2 / 5
The Caveman’s Valentine
After reading more than a handful of positive reviews, I decided to give this a shot. Though I tried to keep my expectations reasonable, I found myself wishing I’d taped the average 3am movie to watch instead.
I can see how this might have once been a brief and slight change of pace in a film festival or something (?-or is it just the average film festival wannabe thing-?), but it’s really not worth the time. The plot is ragged and completely lacks any tension, and Jackson gives one of the worst and most transparent and “unresearched” roles of his career. Truly cliche after cliche, from the supposed “drama” of C-grade music, to the weak presentations of supposed “mental illness”, to the hollow and totally unbelievable genius gone mad thing. Yeah, right.
Maybe something different if it’s ever on at 3am (and you don’t mind falling asleep and missing a feeble ending), but otherwise not worth the hassle.
Rating: 1 / 5
The Caveman’s Valentine