A commercial chameleon who directed a fair amount of famous and well-liked films, but failed to establish a signature style throughout his career. Even so it pays to dig through his vast oeuvre, if only to keep tabs on popular cinema.
Solid pieces
The inoffensive
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Surprisingly fun and apt comedy that smartly parodizes Beatles-mania, without being too snarky. The performances are great, there are some solid gags and the pacing never slows down. It's not a masterpiece, far from it, but it's definitely one of Zemeckis' better films and a remarkably upbeat 70s flick. Good fun, even if you don't particularly like the Beatles.
Worthy but flawed
A romantic espionage thriller set during WWII. While Zemeckis tries his best to turn it into a classy affair, he isn't quite the man for the job. While there's very little wrong with this film, it still ends up rather plain and forgettable. It's all so predicable and safe that you start to wonder why they even bothered with this one.
A film that starts with a lot of action, but quickly settles down to become an addication drama with a little courtroom thrown in for good measure. Washington and Reilly do good work, but Zemeckis isn't subtle enough to make a drama like this really stand out. Borderline acceptable.
The Polar Express
Back to the Future
Dubious filler
Zemeckis remaking Roald Dahl's The Witches did sound like a pretty nice idea. Zemeckis has a decent track record of modernizing old classics and with proper backing of guys like Del Toro and Cuarón this was a project with quite a bit of potential. The budget was there too, sadly the results isn't all that.
The film doesn't change too much about the original story except the setting. A young boy gets mixed up in the affairs of a coven of witches, who are planning to get rid of all the children by giving them poisoned candy. Together with his grandmother and two friends the boy devises a counter plan to stop the witches in their tracks.
The CG is quite poor, Hathaway's performance is absolutely dreadful, Chris Rock's voice-over should've been scrapped and the film simply lacks that juicy, slightly overstated atmosphere that is so typical for Dahl's work. The film at least looks nice and colorful, but this should've been so much better. Disappointing.
Romancing the Stone
Plain forgettable
Big nopes
Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future Part II
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
