i'll bet right now you're just lounging by the pool , humming " i will always love you " and wistfully recalling your candlelight dinners with success . it isn't necessarily over for you : i say you still have enough charm that you could avoid starring in " kevin ! " for at least a few more years . begin by scribbling " the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long " somewhere you'll always see it , perhaps on the fridge door , or on a bedroom mirror with lipstick . you had a heck of a thing going there until you agreed to star in robin hood : prince of thieves , where you were not only upstaged by powerhouses morgan freeman and alan rickman , but christian slater ( ! ) , several dozen tall trees , bows , arrows , and a canoe , too . after dances with wolves and jfk , you decided the world needed more three hour movies , expensive three hour movies , so you starred in and produced wyatt earp ; wyatt earp the man was a boring idiot who made the history books solely due to a general lack of famous wyatts . wyatt earp was so dull a cowboy that he died of natural causes . tombstone was a vastly superior movie based on the same legend , and that featured kurt russell as earp and dana delaney as his girlfriend ! ( she was played by joanna going in your movie-you know , the character known best in wyatt earp as " jew whore " . what were you and lawrence kasdan thinking ? ) now , you're suffering the demise of yet another of your epics , the postman , a film so financially disastrous that it all but eradicated the memory waterworld's and tin cup's mildly lucrative box office takes . the postman is not the worst movie ever made-people in hollywood are quick to forget movies like howard the duck whenever the next bomb comes along . yet it is a ridiculous movie . i suspect you thought you had another braveheart on your hands-why else line up two armies on horesback , all prepared for battle , for the climax of your film ? -but " mailheart " the postman is not . ( i can think of some more appropriate alternate titles : post encounters of the worst kind ; farewell , my salary ; howard the postman ; the postman's never watched twice . . . ) what a brown movie . i hate brown . you love brown . dances with wolves was golden and brown-it looked like an eggo commercial . the postman had me running for a glass of water every two minutes ; would the post-apocalyptic world look this maddeningly bland and dry ? what exactly happened to this desert world , anyway ? did we all become so stupid that we didn't immediately begin rebuilding homes , restaurants , and most importantly , shopping malls , after " the war " ? why did you choose to drive the movie's plot with a dumb group of terrorists who , well , terrorize townfolk across america ? why is it only * they * have ammunition , anyway ? was it really appropriate to cast your daughter as a girl who has a sweet crush on you , the drifter-cum-postman ? why cast english actress olivia williams as an american ? don't you realize that european women can only deliver their big emotional scenes in their native accent ? ( take a look at the less-than-stellar performances of an american-ized nicole kidman or an american-ized minnie driver . ) who could give a damn whether you lived or died at the end of this movie ? if it came down to a fight for leadership between you and the leader of the terrorists , why didn't you do that halfway through the film and save us all a lot of headaches ? why cast will patton as the bad guy ? because you worked with him in no way out ? sure , he's a suitably creepy villain ; know why ? because he's creepy in everything , including armageddon , in which he plays a heroic astronaut who practically slithers into his space suit ! why heroize the most demonic institution in america , the u . s . postal system ? was tom petty supposed to be playing tom petty ? if so , why didn't he look more skeletal ? ( he should have been around 70 years old . ) why , oh why , do i have so many questions ? ( i could ask plenty more . ) shouldn't a three hour running time have provided you enough space to answer everything ? you have one great line in this film , and you deliver it to a mule ! : " the things i like about my ass . . . " i had to wonder . actually , i enjoyed the tone of the opening scenes , a relaxed cynicism , if you'll accept such clunky phrasing-too bad you couldn't resist the temptation to film yet another love letter to your country . ultimately , i'm saying relax . there is no quota , no need for you to make a picture a year . settle down . really question future screenplays before you commit to them . feel free to write back . i know how much you like letters .
