| Overall Grade: |
F |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
F |
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| Direction: |
F |
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|
| Visuals: |
D- |
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Terrible - and I'm not Joe Six Pack
by HI (movies profile)
Oct 11, 2008
10
of
13 people found this review helpful
Ok, if you decide to see this movie regardless of what I say, and during the middle you're wondering if you should stay, the rest of the movie is more of the same. The only thing you might want to stay for is Hathway's sitdown with her father and sister, that was a very good performance.
Anne Hathaway is great in this movie - this movie was poorly directed. I'll list each problem I had with the movie.
The feeling I got was that the director was self-indulgent, overly artistic, and emotionally void at the same time. I didn't think it was possible to have a bunch of artists and be emotionally void.
The movie was shot with sort of a 'handycam' jerky feel to it.
Anne Hathaway isn't in the movie enough, and her character isn't expressed enough. Most of the time is spent on family scenes with poor actors and everyone in the family has an artistic talent that is on display. When watching this, you don't get a feeling of cohesion, but rather the director knew someone, and said "You want to be in a movie I"m making?"
The 'family' is a cross representation of cultures, and it's very forced. Why a black man and a white woman would decide on an indian wedding and have cuban dancers with jamaican drummers. it really came off as overindulgent and sloppy. I think a lot of people would look at it as a 'celebration of people' but I got more of a 'let's see how many cultures we can cram into this shot' feel.
Rachel's husband - get used to the first look he has, that's the depth of his acting ability.
I was expecting this to be either a 'slice of life', a comedy, or a drama. It's really none of those. It's more like watching a high end home movie of a wedding process.
Some scenes are too long, like the dancing scene. Literally, it's like being at a wedding and just watching people dance, but the people are paid actors.
If you've seen the trailer, you've seen about 40% of Hathaway's performance in the movie.
The tone of the movie is mostly argumentative, and hostile, and it's not with Hathaway. The family members have issues that I didn't really care about.
The 'dishwasher' scene is the biggest joke. While this scene was inspired by a famous director and actor arguing, in this movie it's turned into a friendly competition that has a really simple and transparent ending. It was really lame.
There is a constant attempt in the movie to bond the current argument with music from the token guitar players. The music is meant to offset the argument, but it just comes off as confusing.
I think if you're a left wing female 20-29, you might like this movie. I don't mean that as insulting, that's the demographic that would like this movie.
This 40 year old independent thought it was an unintelligent movie. I was expecting more substance related to Hathaway's character, not a movie equivalent of a combination of a wedding, the united nations and a craft show. |
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