Overrated and overhyped

Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and his ever faithful Tonto like companion Captain Hastings are in Acapulco for Murder In Three Acts. As you gather by the title their are three murders, but their connection to each other is in some cases non-existent and to the murderer they are known in varying degrees of acquaintanceship. The first is of a clergyman Philip Guilmant at a cocktail party given by retired expatriate actor Tony Curtis when a lethal cocktail is given the victim. At another cocktail party with a different setting the same happens to Dr. Dana Elcar. Lastly a poor catatonic woman in an asylum is slipped a box of chocolates laced with the same poison. The old switch is used like in many a magician's act.Peter Ustinov as Poirot is present at the first and that was the perpetrator's fatal mistake. As Dana Elcar says all too prophetically for him, crime seems to follow him around.Agatha Christie purists will object to the way poor Jonathan Cecil is treated like such a boob. He's not in the David Suchet BBC series. It's very much like Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson who slowly became a befuddled idiot in the Universal Sherlock Holmes movies.Still the film is all right not up to the standard of Ustinov big screen Hercule Poirot films. And the murderer when revealed truly steals the film.s

So bland is this adaptation and so embarrassingly awful the dialogue that I feel all my blood has drained away. To say it has been 'Americanised' is rather insulting to Americans, however it is fair to say that it has been reduced down to the Lowest Common Denominator of American culture. Any subtlety, wit or literary value has been stripped out lest it confuse the low-brow knuckle-draggers of middle America. Witness the way that characters are forced to endure that most excruciating of all devices - the completely implausible and unnecessary exposition of character/plot/history details to another character (the cheapest and laziest way of filling in such details - aimed at an audience considered too dim to pick up necessary facts from a more sophisticated rendition of them).It's just as well that Ustinov's portrayal of Poirot includes a more-or-less constant 'bad smell' facial expression, given the pong given off by this script! I am sure that you can actually see Ustinov literally shuddering as he has to endure some of this dialogue. The comment about this feeling like a really third-rate episode of 'Murder She Wrote' - with all the cheap shortcuts, rice-paper-thin characterisations and contrived, cringe-worthy, painful dialogue aimed at the terminally stupid - is spot on. Euuurghh ... still feel dirty having watched it!

Peter Ustinov is an absolute joy to behold in the role of Hercule Poirot. He played Poirot in three theatrical films: Death On the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, and Appointment With Death. He also played Poirot in three TV movies: Thirteen At Dinner, Murder in Three Acts, and Dead Man's Folly. It's always a delight to spend time with Ustinov's Poirot. He's so much fun! The three Poirot TV movies starring Ustinov are now available in a three DVD set. I've had a great time watching these with friends and family and all of Ustinov's Poirot movies are worth watching and re-watching. My deep affection for Ustinov's Poirot grows with each viewing. He's brilliant and each of his Poirot movies are fantastic fun.

Having read all of the Agatha Christie books, I have to say that David Suchet was the ultimate Hercule Poirot as written by Agatha Christie. But my favorite Poirot, having nothing whatsoever to do with either Poirot or what Ms. Christie wrote, is Peter Ustinov. It always reminds me of what someone once said about Zero Mostel in "Fiddler on the Roof" - "He's fabulous...but what he does has nothing to do with Fiddler." Ustinov is a sheer delight in every way - he's funny, he's charming, he's warm, he's relaxed - all things that, frankly, Agatha's Hercule just wasn't."Murder in Three Acts" is a slapped together TV movie without the usual star power except for Tony Curtis and several TV actors - the gorgeous Emma Samms, who was a big TV star in the '80s, Diana Muldaur, Concetta Tomei, Dana Elcar, Nicholas Pryor, and several others. The characters have been Americanized, and though set in Acapulco, aside from a few exterior shots, you don't get much atmosphere.Though the story is very interesting (it is, after all, based on an Agatha Christie novel), the production has a certain blandness to it. You know there's a problem when Diana Muldaur announces that she and the Tony Curtis character did "Private Lives" together. Now, I happen to be very fond of Tony Curtis - I did research for his autobiography, he's on the cover of a book I wrote, I found him a very charming man - but come on, PRIVATE LIVES? With that New York accent? I don't think so. He does, however, look really fabulous, and if you watch the scenes in his house carefully, you'll catch some fantastic photos of him on the wall.It's an okay way to pass the time, and the plot is intriguing, Tony's Tony, Emma's beautiful and sexy, Nicholas Pryor is funny, and Ustinov is - well, he's Poirot even if he's not what Dame Agatha had in mind.