The Bodyguard

There's no pretending this is a perfect movie. Yet I doubt I could have enjoyed it more if it were. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

I thought the basic situation in The Bodyguard was intriguing enough to sustain a film all by itself: on the one hand, a star who grows rich through the adulation that fans feel for her, and on the other hand, a working man who, for a salary, agrees to substitute his body as a target instead of hers. Makes you think. Read full review

Some of the more tender moments - Farmer and Marron dancing at a country bar and gently probing each other's secrets - are particularly affecting. Less successful is a sequence purportedly set at the Academy Awards that wreaks of artificiality. The utter fecklessness of the segment is so jarring that it isn't until the climax that The Bodyguard pulls itself together.

It all works quite well as glossy entertainment, but ultimately The Bodyguard satisfies only if you don't think about it too much. [25 Nov 1992, p.D3]

Its popularity continues to confound critics everywhere. Read full review

Jackson's showy technique does little to lighten the over-earnest heroics and ponderous references to samurai, which are punctuated by assorted numbers and costume changes for Houston. Lawrence Kasdan, it seems, mulled over the first draft of his screenplay twenty years ago; it should have been left to languish in development purgatory. Read full review

If you can overlook the obvious flaws -- a bumpy beginning, a villain whose motive is both too obvious and hard to swallow -- The Bodyguard has its flashy, shallow pleasures. There's some wit in Kasdan's script, and plenty of dread in the big Oscar-ceremony climax (reminiscent of "The Man Who Knew Too Much"). When it works, it's like watching a paranoid edition of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." [30 Nov 1992, p.80]

The steady Costner gives a competent enough performance this time out as he dances with foxes, or at least one, while Grammy winner Houston is quite impressive in her feature debut, displaying both hot and cool emotion as well as performing six new songs...Unfortunately, she is assigned to handle lines like, "You're a hard one to figure out, Frank Farmer," and "I've never felt this safe before." Unfortunately, too, the romance gets in the way of the thriller, and when the two principals finally take to their bed, so does the movie. [25 Nov 1992, p.C2]

Deep inside the vague, unfocused excesses of The Bodyguard, the tale of a buttoned-down security agent hired to protect a glamorous pop star, there lurks the potential for a compelling film noir. Read full review

No wonder this Lawrence Kasdan script has been on the shelf for more than a decade: In the custody of director Mick Jackson, it proves a jumbled mess, with a few enjoyable moments but little continuity or flow. Read full review

A dreary, turgid melodrama. Read full review

Watching The Bodyguard is like trying to have a telephone conversation when you have a bad connection. The guy on the other end keeps saying things that sound maddeningly incomplete....After a while, you want to hang up.

Costner, allegedly smitten with his client, had more chemistry with the Warren Commission in JFK. [25 Nov 1992, p.1D]

The Bodyguard is a classic of show-business hubris, a wondrously trashy belly-flop, proving that no amount of glittering sets and star power can save a story that should have been buried with McQueen. Read full review

The Bodyguard isn't a good movie, but it's often enjoyably bad, and that's no small achievement. So many talented people had a hand in it, starting with director Mick Jackson and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, that you stare at the screen in a state of rapt bewilderment. Just about everything that can go wrong with this film does, and yet it's compulsively watchable. (So is a train wreck.) [25 Nov 1992, p.F1]

The Bodyguard is an outrageous piece of saccharine kitsch — or, at least, it might have been had the movie seemed fully awake. Instead, it’s glossy yet slack; it’s like Flashdance without the hyperkinetic musical numbers and with the romance padded out to a disastrously languid 2 hours and 10 minutes. Read full review

The Bodyguard is a misfire. It's one of those perplexing but complete failures where all the ingredients show up, but somehow manage never to jell into anything convincing. [25 Nov 1992, p.35]

Parts of The Bodyguard are inadvertently hilarious, as in a romantic encounter involving Houston, Costner and a samurai sword (she unsheathes it so very, very carefully). Others just seem to go on, and on, and on -- at two hours and five minutes, this one is easily a half-hour too long. [25 Nov 1992, p.E4]

THE BODYGUARDS for the people who made The Bodyguard should be fired - because they should have thrown their clients to the ground and held them there until their desire to make this movie went away. [30 Nov 1992, p.3D]

Perhaps one of the most unbearable viewing experiences of the year, complete with a formulaic script, lousy acting, and muddled direction. Read full review