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Rating:  - Do directors read?
Another movie based on the Cliff Notes, this movie gets everything wrong. It is even worse than the Sue Lyon movie, since that older movie created a parallel story which, while nothing like the book, almost stood on its own. In that one we got a 21 year old Lolita to satisfy the censors. In this one we get a 15 year old Swain who looks 18. She is not a Lolita regardless, by Nabokov's definition of nymphet. She is too curvy by far and entirely too seductive. Lolita is supposed to be 12, weigh 84 lbs soaking wet, with "unflared iliacs" and dirty hair. Instead of this "pale little gutter girl" we get Swain, a "big-breasted and practically brainless baba." Irons is no better. A great actor, he has been wonderful in many roles, but he is not Humbert Humbert. Humbert was big and dark and hairy, handsome and educated but the opposite of Irons' catfoot delicacy. Beyond this, Irons and Swain have no heat regardless. The love scenes have this golden Hallmark falsity to them that could not possibly be further from Nabokov's intent. This movie is a misfire in all ways, an absolute disaster. I can envisage a wonderful adaptation of Lolita; what I cannot envision is where it will come from. The US and UK are more uptight now than they were in the 50's and France isn't much interested in American stories, even when they are penned by a Russian internationalist. Hopefully the world will survive into a new age where some true artist can rediscover this masterpiece and tell it faithfully.
Rating:  - Close but so far away...
This films greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. This movie plays Humberts obsession with Lolita seriously and sympathetically. You can't help but feel bad for Humbert by the end of the movie as it is really Lolita who takes advantage of him and not the other way around. That is the film's strength but also the weakness; Lolita is 12 years old. That's just creepy. This film tries to make you feel bad for a man who, for all intents and purposes, uses his charm and status as stepfather to sleep with his 12 year old daughter. I find it disturbing. Surely this was not Nabokov's intention when he wrote the novel.
Jeremy Irons is very good at the role he plays, but he isn't the character the books gives us. The character in the book was not a nice man. He drugged his wife, he planned to drug Lolita to take advantage of her while she slept, he lied and manipulated, he planned in his mind to kill his wife and probably would have had she not been killed before he could get to it. But Jeremy Irons is not like that at all. His character is just a lonely man in the wrong place at the wrong time; he is haunted and almost, it seems, justified in his love(?) for Lolita by the sad events of his childhood.
Melanie Griffith is not a good Charlotte at all. She is not nagging enough, she is far too good looking, and until she give Humbert her love letter there is no indication that she is in love with him. There definitely needed to be more time spent developing her character.
Doninque Swain seemed far too aware of what she was doing at times, and far too childish at other times. The film made her look like the bad guy for seducing Humbert and using his obsession with her as a weapon against him. That isn't how the books played her at all.
Clare Quilty is all but absent in this film. He has a very short appearance at the hotel, and then we don't see him again until the end of the film. The book gives him a lot of charisma that was completely absent; in this film he is just a dirty old man. Look to Sellers performance in the 1962 version for a much more rounded and exact portrayal of Quilty.
Overall, this was not a bad film if it stood on its own. The camera work is excellent in expressing the emotions of the film and Jeremy Irons is excellent is his portrayal of a Humbert (albeit a different one that was presented to us in the book) but this film misses the message of the book even if it is a more literal cinematic translation of the book.
Rating:  - An inconvenient truth
(4.5/5 stars) Very few films (or the books upon which they are based) portray the relationship between an adult and an adolescent seriously, preferring instead to depict them as monsters, perverts or both. Not so with "Lolita." Humbert Humbert is as normal and as realistic as any other fictional character, and so are his human traits. He just so happens to fall in love/lust with Dolores, the fourteen year old daughter of Charlotte Haze, a widow with a room to rent. It is an unspoken fact that most men are attracted to teenage girls, yet are afraid to admit it because it is not acceptable for adults to act on these impulses. Most people see this as taking advantage of someone not yet old enough to make important decisions like this on their own. Even though Humbert acknowledges the socially unacceptability of this relationship and keeps it hidden from everyone, at the same time he indulges his fantasies and exploits his new-found fortunes. Although details would most likely differ, this sad tale is ultimately practical about the fate of a man who disregards reality and ignores potential consequences when he takes a fourteen year old girl as his lover. Many men would like to do this, John Mark Carr being one of the latest, yet few do because of the consequences. Most men can envision the effects of their actions and conclude both that this girl will not stay this age forever and he would not be able to keep this relationship secret indefinitely. In that sense, it is a cautionary tale for those who fantasize about this sort of thing. Conversely, it allows everyone else to experience a glimpse into the mind of someone who acts on this type of fantasy. Either way, "Lolita" is a tragic story that is faithfully brought to the screen by director Adrian Lyne and a magnificent cast.
Rating: - A hot and erotic iron.
Beautiful!!
When I saw this movie,I was going to faint.It is a wonderful and succesful remake.I saw even the previous production of Lolita,in black n' white,but this is charming.Simply hits me at first sight.
It might be that Lolita is jealous of her mother.Psychologically,Lolita wants to be her mother's copyright(miniature).The father isn't there to hold back the spoiled child.She is matured enough in 'erotic relationship',but still a child in the mind.
Poor Professor Humbert,he can't be neither a father,nor a man.He should be a priest.
Rating: - Anyone who defends Kubrick is an idiot.
Alright -- first off, Stanley Kubrick (who is best known for *stealing* great literary works and making them "his own" -- like A Clockwork Orange or Lolita, for example) is *not* a filmmaking god. He is medicore, at best. His adaptation of Lolita was terrible -- and all of you who defend him probably never *read* the dang novel, and have no sense of what it lacked. Lyne's is good, not as good as it could be, but better than the black and white trash that Kubrick made. He just did not do it. Lyne had more of a sense of Nabokov's orginal vision -- although it still falls short. So, to sum up: shut up about Kubrick. His just plain sucked, and does injustice to one of the greatest literary works of our time.
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