Review – The Shining

One of my great curiosities about Stephen King is why the heck he was so dissatisfied with Stanley Kubrick’s direction of the film version of his novel (or I suppose I should say the first film version of his novel, because King himself had it redone in a made-for-TV version some years later). I suppose the TV version stuck a little bit more closely to the plot of the book, but it goes without saying that it was nowhere near the visual tour de force of this one. And of course nobody does crazy quite like Jack Nicholson. Sure, its a little long, downright annoying in parts (listening to the kid say “REDRUM” over and over is like enduring an alarm clock you can’t shut off or a phone you can’t answer) and some of the acting is weak (not to mention that Shelly Duvall spends most of the movie smoking like a damn chimney, which must not have seemed odd at the time but can be a little distracting in this less tobacco-friendly age). But the visuals are worth the drawbacks, especially if you can see it on the big screen or at least take it in on a larger TV. The DVD features a short production documentary, but unless watching Stanley Kubrick and Shelly Duvall bickering sounds exciting to you it’s fairly missable. Worth seeing