#1
Posted: 9/9/13 at 11:05pm
Figured we'd compile a thread with reviews for this movie. I couldn't be more excited. Hitfix is not so positive, but tweets from Pete Hammond (Deadline) and Anne Thompson (IndieWire) are positive, so we'll see.
Here's Gregory Ellwood from Hitfix, mixed-to-negative:
The performances are all, as you might expect, very good. Streep is often both touching and terrible as Violet's drug-induced fog rolls in, leaving her fuzzy and disoriented, then rolls out again, allowing her to perform ego surgery on each of her kids with remarkable accuracy. Roberts rarely chooses to play characters who are this openly angry and hard to like, and I have to say… she gives it everything she's got. She goes right at Streep, hard, and they are well-matched here. Right down the line, the cast all seems to be determined to do well by the script, and I think they hit a lot of little grace notes along the way. There's one or two scenes with Dermot Mulroney and Abigail Breslin that feel grafted on from something else, and they tonally don't even really work with the rest of the film. Juliette Lewis is essentially window dressing here, just making faces in response to various affronts, but without much else to do. Cooper has one amazing moment with Martindale, and then he just vanishes from the film. Cumberbatch and Nicholson play a storyline that could have easily supported its own film, and while the material has the potential to land like a bomb if played right, it's oddly muted here. It's not their fault… it's just that the film feels overstuffed, like director John Wells isn't sure how to squeeze the most out of these moments.
Ultimately, he's my biggest problem with the film. I didn't see the Broadway production, but I read the play, and I think Letts has a great ear for the way families can casually savage one another. The play hurts. It is tough piece of writing, and when I read it, I couldn't help but flash back to all the moments over the course of my life where I've seen painful moments between members of my own family. No one can hurt you more than the people who love you, because no one knows you the way they do. And while Wells gives the actors enough room to do some very strong work in the film, he's not really doing anything to support or elevate the material. It's like he thinks his main job is to just get out of the way, and as a result, the entire film feels to me like a pulled punch. Even the most explosive moment in the piece is muddled thanks to the way Wells stages and shoots it. And there's a choice he makes in the final moments of the film that I feel utterly undoes the cold and brutal emotion that comes directly before it. I feel like stage is such a different experience than film that you can't just count on something making the jump because it worked well before. I've had several of my plays produced, and the difference between sitting in a live theater doing a particularly tense and difficult moment and sitting in a movie theater during that same moment is that in a live theater, there is a certain extra electricity that comes from being in the room with people while this unfolds. There's a reality to it that I think lends it a distinct visceral edge, while a movie screen can almost feel too safe, removed, and Wells isn't a strong enough director to figure out how to get around that.
Hitfix.com
Here's Gregory Ellwood from Hitfix, mixed-to-negative:
The performances are all, as you might expect, very good. Streep is often both touching and terrible as Violet's drug-induced fog rolls in, leaving her fuzzy and disoriented, then rolls out again, allowing her to perform ego surgery on each of her kids with remarkable accuracy. Roberts rarely chooses to play characters who are this openly angry and hard to like, and I have to say… she gives it everything she's got. She goes right at Streep, hard, and they are well-matched here. Right down the line, the cast all seems to be determined to do well by the script, and I think they hit a lot of little grace notes along the way. There's one or two scenes with Dermot Mulroney and Abigail Breslin that feel grafted on from something else, and they tonally don't even really work with the rest of the film. Juliette Lewis is essentially window dressing here, just making faces in response to various affronts, but without much else to do. Cooper has one amazing moment with Martindale, and then he just vanishes from the film. Cumberbatch and Nicholson play a storyline that could have easily supported its own film, and while the material has the potential to land like a bomb if played right, it's oddly muted here. It's not their fault… it's just that the film feels overstuffed, like director John Wells isn't sure how to squeeze the most out of these moments.
Ultimately, he's my biggest problem with the film. I didn't see the Broadway production, but I read the play, and I think Letts has a great ear for the way families can casually savage one another. The play hurts. It is tough piece of writing, and when I read it, I couldn't help but flash back to all the moments over the course of my life where I've seen painful moments between members of my own family. No one can hurt you more than the people who love you, because no one knows you the way they do. And while Wells gives the actors enough room to do some very strong work in the film, he's not really doing anything to support or elevate the material. It's like he thinks his main job is to just get out of the way, and as a result, the entire film feels to me like a pulled punch. Even the most explosive moment in the piece is muddled thanks to the way Wells stages and shoots it. And there's a choice he makes in the final moments of the film that I feel utterly undoes the cold and brutal emotion that comes directly before it. I feel like stage is such a different experience than film that you can't just count on something making the jump because it worked well before. I've had several of my plays produced, and the difference between sitting in a live theater doing a particularly tense and difficult moment and sitting in a movie theater during that same moment is that in a live theater, there is a certain extra electricity that comes from being in the room with people while this unfolds. There's a reality to it that I think lends it a distinct visceral edge, while a movie screen can almost feel too safe, removed, and Wells isn't a strong enough director to figure out how to get around that.
Hitfix.com
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
