Yar, you be here: Gia (Unrated Edition) > Customer Reviews

Gia (Unrated Edition) Customer Reviews (7 - 9 of 53 Reviews)

Believable performance by Jolie
Gia's a great biographic film with a credible story, cast and presentation. Angelina Jolie's performance here is nothing less than incredible, in fact there was a short time when I thought she's really Gia herself and that she's really troubled...that's how convincing her act is. Mercedes R makes a great support role...and a mother as well.

I have seen this movie a number of times since it was let out and its one of my favorites. Jolie is super-impressive as she portrays the highs and lows of Gia's fame: strutting through a crowd of admirers, the look on her face saying, "I'm GIA, and you're nobody!"; indulging in glamour drug of the moment, cocaine; fiercely proclaiming her love for Linda (Elizabeth Mitchell), right in front of Linda's boyfriend; tearfully begging her visiting mother (Mercedes Ruehl) to stay with her, then hurling obscenities at her while throwing her baggage out of the apartment; and quietly and gracefully accepting the most tragic news about her health, just as she's finally getting her life on track. This movie deals very frankly with Gia's sexuality and there is some nudity and scenes of sexuality, but looking past the sex and the drugs and the tough exterior she displayed (especially when someone took her knife away from her), you see a very lost, fragile person. Gia is almost childlike in her disillusionment about the fashion industry, and you feel it in the way she fantasizes about a "normal" life with children, the way she feels like people regard her as a "piece of meat" with no brains, and the way she is so truly hurt by a fellow model calling her hateful names in a jealous rage.

I think this movie is something that should be seen by people of all ages, regardless of its sexual content, because it carries a strong anti-drug message as well as a touching story we can all identify with even if a lot of us are not blessed with the kind of glorious physical beauty Gia was blessed with. For a TV movie it was put together pretty well. Angelina Jolie (who won a Golden Globe for her performance) shines in the title role.


I LIKED IT
I WILL DEFINITELY WATCH IT AGAIN. I ENJOYED IT VERY MUCH!!!

Read "Thing Of Beauty" first, see "Gia", and THEN decide
Before seeing "Gia" I read Stephen Fried's account of Gia, "Thing Of Beauty". In terms of factual representation, I have to say that Mr. Freid's tome won, hands down. Fair enough, anything on the big or small screen simply won't fully translate or capture all the facts, subtleties and inferences that the written word does. In other words, film adaptations rarely live up to the book. Yet I gave "Gia" four stars. Why, you may ask. Simply because I think that if there were any actor at the time who could capture or parallel the turmoil Gia experienced, I would have to agree Angelina Jolie was tailor made for the role. Before Angelina morphed into a UN ambassador and met Brad Pitt, she admittedly had issues, big style. Disastrous relationships, estranged from a parent, being institutionalised at one stage - and lest we forget, she had a fixation with knives and self injury. So who best to parallel the role of Gia? No one could have come close to carrying that role off, and the fact Angelina bore more than a cursory resemblance to Gia further justified her getting the part. For the vast majority of us who never met Gia, or weren't there in the 70's to witness firsthand how absolutely photogenic and mesmeric she was, I think Angelina's portrayal is the closest we will ever get to glimpsing the psyche of the (albeit tortured) Miss Carangi. Which again, is why I give the film 4 stars.

However, what annoyed me about the biopic was the composite sketches of the people who were integral to her life. Where was Rob Fay? Or Rochelle? Sandy Linter? Or any of her real life party pals, i.e. Janice Dickinson? Were there legal restrictions which prevented the "real" players here being mentioned? Also, the sex scenes. Now I'm hardly the most prudish of people when it comes to sex, but the way the sex scenes between Gia and "Linda" were portrayed, in my opinion, they appeared to pander to the heterosexual male fantasy of watching two women, the way the camera panned in on it made me feel distinctly uneasy, as if it were voyeuristic (as opposed to Gia's sexuality being another facet in her being, despite it being such an unresolved issue for her). Another thing I will give the film credit for is the portrayal of how AIDS completely ravaged Gia and how the medical community in the mid 1980's were clearly unable to deal with the prospect of a woman(or much less anyone, come to think of it) having this disease.

As this biopic really did capture the nearest thing to Gia's spirit, and for Angelina fans who somehow haven't yet acquainted themselves with this film, I would by all means say "buy this DVD now" but ONLY if you promise to purchase Stephen Freid's book "Thing Of Beauty" first in order to get the broadest perspective of Gia that you possibly can.

Previous Page

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Next Page