Shining Through (1992)

A Stranger Among Us is worse, where she plays a detective among the Jewish community

[quote]Siskel and Ebert both picked it as the worst movie of 1992

Mel got the Razzie award for worst actress that year

Did she really say in some interview that she had never heard of Holocaust before making this film or is that just a DL urban myth?

I mean I'd say everything except Working Girl is a bad performance and from what I understand she barely made it through filming that one.

John Gielgud was in this?!!! Did he need the money? I wonder if he was laughing at Melanie behind her back

R5 he's in it for maybe 7 minutes and serves no purpose.

Hopefully he at least got a nice paycheck out of it

The fact it made $43M is a testament to Michael Douglas’ bankability at the time.

Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer were up for the Melanie role, Meg would have been equally laughable but Michelle was a missed opportunity. She was pretty good in The Russia House and this is a similar film.

I did the strudel monologue when I auditioned for Hannah Montana

R1 Yes. I still remember reading the Janet Maslin NYT review where she ridiculed Melanie’s delivery of the line, “Wait. 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.”

When I think of a Jewish woman, I think of

"Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer were up for the Melanie role"

R11 the character is half Jewish/half German

I thought it was after being informed that six million Jews died during the holocaust, Melanie replied "That's a lot of people". Like it was the first time she heard that. Too busy fucking Don Johnson instead of going to history class, I guess.

R13 yea, that sounds more like it.

Melanie should play Janet Jackson in a biopic

Taste my strudel!

I love this movie. But I love most spy melodrama.

Joely Richardson is good in it.

My late friend Richard loved this film when it came out. He had rotten taste but even he knew it was ridiculous. Since I'd not seen it (still to this day) he'd delight in acting out one scene where Melanie is learning how to ask for some microfilm hidden in a fish at a fishmonger's or something like that. I recall he'd put on a serious face and woman's voice and blankly say "fresh fish!", or "fresh halibut", he did many versions of it!

Just reading this thread makes me miss him, gone twenty-seven years this week actually. I should watch the whole movie. I'll probably cry, lol.

The score is overwrought and 80s TV movie sounding, the strings are nice but they’re banging the piano

Melanie fucked everyone in Hollywood at least twice by the time she was 19. Who should play her in her biopic?

R20 Jennifer Lawerence

R20, Minnie Mouse on helium

She and Don Johnson, did a movie together back in the 90's ( I think), called "Paradise". Elijah Wood and Thora Birch p!ayed the kids in the movie. MG, was just ok in it and Don Johnson as well. The movie isn't great, but for some reason, I really like the movie. Elijah W and Thora B, were very good in it. Its about a couple who live in coastal South Carolina, whose baby died, and they are bitter and closed off emotionally. Don Johnson, is better than MG in it, and I sort of can't stop watching him. Besides Working Girl, this movie is the only other movie that I thought she was ok in.

She was never a great beauty yet had Don Johnson and Steven Bauer at their prime.

Sydney Sweeney's got that languid, sexy, dumb vibe to play Mel.

Can't wait to see Sydney in Shining Through 2: Electric Boogaloo

A Stranger Among Us has a twist in the plot that makes it interesting

I never thought she was great looking but the men loved her. She was good in that movie where she flashes Paul Newman her tits. It was a small role as the cheated-on wife of Bruce Willis. And Cherry 2000 which was so camp.

I love Melanie Griffith, and it's unfair to say that Working Girl is her only good performance. Body Double, Something Wild, Cherry 2000, and Stormy Monday, she was excellent in those films. She wasn't bad in Pacific Heights or Paradise, but the problem was after Working Girl, they tried to turn MG into a Hollywood A-list star when she excelled in quirky roles.

Having said that, I unabashedly love Shining Through. Some parts are ridiculous, but other parts work. As r17 said, Joely Richardson is well cast, I think the cinematography and score are very good and the last 30 minutes are suspenseful. It's a guilty pleasure.

Does anyone want my strudel?

"Melanie should play Janet Jackson in a biopic"

r15 no, Julia Roberts already got that roll. Her depiction ofHarriet Tubman inspired the producers to give the the part of Janet

Add me to the (noticeably short) list of those who love this movie. I've watched it many times, and have always marveled at the hate.

Total popcorn flick.

This sounded so laughably bad that I skipped it.

I love the anecdote in the book about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities (Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy) when she takes off for 3 weeks and comes back to NYC with new tits.

“Melanie Griffith had vanished after her last scene in New York, three weeks earlier. When she had reappeared on the lot the previous day to try on her evening gown, the costume people were surprised by what they saw when she undressed. Word quickly passed around the lot: Melanie had new—larger—breasts. There was much speculation about why she did it. The favored story attributed her decision to a desire to please her husband, the actor Don Johnson.“

[quote]r34 This sounded so laughably bad that I skipped it.

It’s based on a highly praised, bestselling novel.

There’s nothing “laughably bad” about the concept or the cast. This was a big budget film made by professionals. It’s more innocuous than ridiculous.

What about Melanie playing an actress in Celebrity? The director in the film within the film asks that her face convey the human condition.

If Debra Winger was originally attached she would have been vetoed once Michael Douglas signed on. He wouldn't work with her after supposedly meeting with him for Romancing the Stone.

R38 you mean when she supposedly bit him? Haha. I can’t imagine her doing well in that role anyway.

Supposedly.

I would say Something Wild was Griffith's highlight, more than Working Girl. She was ideal for it, and vice versa. But maybe it was just going to be diminishing returns, no matter what order in which the films came. I remember when a critic (one who to that point had been positive toward Griffith) reviewed Pacific Heights and wrote that the "funky little girl" voice that had been charming in earlier films was starting to wear thin, and if it's the only voice Griffith was capable of, she had better start being more careful about how she's cast.