...that we should ALL - every single one of us - be able to agree on. If you do not agree, you are not of this earth and should be shot back into space in the general direction of your home planet.
Anyone who reads - who can read - should agree that The Godfather is a masterpiece. The movie, meh, I can see where someone would think it was tripe. Kay is a silly character; so is Connie; Luca Brazzi is a buffoon; the dialog is stilted; and the plot is disjointed and hard to follow. It won a bunch of Oscars but...eh, Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture, and Denzel Washington won his Oscar for that POS movie Training Day, so I don't really consider whoever votes on these things to be terribly sophisticated or unbiased.
However, the book is a timeless classic, with only a nodding similarity to the movie bastardization. The characters are well developed and the mafia guys are suitably menacing yet sympathetic. The plot is engrossing in a way Coppola wasn't talented enough to get across on film. Don Corleone is a complex man, and even the minor characters are fleshed out to create a tapestry of brilliance.
And yet....out of 612 Amazon reviews, 15 people gave it less than 3 stars. That is a tiny fraction, and I understand that, but there should be no one - no one - giving it poor reviews. Perhaps those 15 are illiterate and flat cannot handle anything more complicated than Janet Evanovich, I don't know.
But this, more than anything I've seen or heard of, assures me that We the People do not have a single common universal value and never will. If we cannot agree in unison that The Godfather is literary masterpiece, we will never EVER agree on any social or political issue.
I think those 15 people should be exiled and have to go form their own country.
Anyone who reads - who can read - should agree that The Godfather is a masterpiece. The movie, meh, I can see where someone would think it was tripe. Kay is a silly character; so is Connie; Luca Brazzi is a buffoon; the dialog is stilted; and the plot is disjointed and hard to follow. It won a bunch of Oscars but...eh, Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture, and Denzel Washington won his Oscar for that POS movie Training Day, so I don't really consider whoever votes on these things to be terribly sophisticated or unbiased.
However, the book is a timeless classic, with only a nodding similarity to the movie bastardization. The characters are well developed and the mafia guys are suitably menacing yet sympathetic. The plot is engrossing in a way Coppola wasn't talented enough to get across on film. Don Corleone is a complex man, and even the minor characters are fleshed out to create a tapestry of brilliance.
And yet....out of 612 Amazon reviews, 15 people gave it less than 3 stars. That is a tiny fraction, and I understand that, but there should be no one - no one - giving it poor reviews. Perhaps those 15 are illiterate and flat cannot handle anything more complicated than Janet Evanovich, I don't know.
But this, more than anything I've seen or heard of, assures me that We the People do not have a single common universal value and never will. If we cannot agree in unison that The Godfather is literary masterpiece, we will never EVER agree on any social or political issue.
I think those 15 people should be exiled and have to go form their own country.
nor have I seen he movie. 
