THE ROMANTICS (2010) (a review)

THE ROMANTICS (2010) (a review)

Based on the novel of the same name by the same guy who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Kind of a modern day BIG CHILL but with a wedding at the center of it instead of a death. Stars: Anna Paquin, Katie Holmes, Josh Dumel, Adam Brody, Malin Akerman, Dianna Argon, Elijah Wood.

The story: a group of close friends (well, the girls are clase at least) gather for a wedding which is complicated by the groom and the maid-of-honor having been in love. After a rehersal dinner that goes badly, the bride to be goes to her bed and the rest of them get drunk. The groom goes missing and they pair off to find him. Lots of talking and some fun playing around.

Was it good?

Not really. It was pretty boring to be honest. These movies need one of two things -- shock or honesty and this movie didn't shock and the honesty just didn't work.

I can see why it would attact such a strong cast -- there was a lot of good to it. A great idea, lots of potentially funny set pieces, all the characters got to do interesting things, and it didn't have robots or anything stupid like that. And it did have some honest moments. The confrontation between the gilted maid of honor and the groom who gilted her and started dating her best friend had some nice stuff in it. So why didn't it work? Two reasons: the cast and the director.

The cast, up and down, is wrong. Everything seems forced for them. None of them have that real feeling, that live-and-breath connection to the charcters, so when they are trying to say those honest moments, those moments that are supposed to connect and just floor the audience...they come off as being meh. And it isn't that the cast isn't game for it, but that connection just isn't there.

Which brings us to the director, or in this case the writer, adaptor and director since he did all three. Clearly he has a lot of talent. Like I said there is a lot of good stuff here. But he just doesn't seem to get how to translate what works on a page into working in real life. There is a way we read and interpret things in our head when we are reading a book or script and it is just fundamentally different than the way we watch and listen when we are watching a movie. He picked the wrong cast (talented though they might be) and just didn't get them where they needed to to make the scenes that had to work work.

Still it wasn't horrible. There will be some people that connect to it and really like it. If I were younger I might even give it a borderline recommend (rental), but since I'm over 30, I'm going to have to...

**** AVOID ***

OXFORD MURDERS (a review)

OXFORD MURDERS (a review)

A detective/thriller starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt, based on the novel of the same name.

The story: a man goes to Oxford to study under a famed mathmatician. The mathmetician humiliates him, but as the boy is getting ready to leave he and the mathmatician come across the body of a murdered woman with a note, a mathematical symbol. She is the first in a series of murders and the pair must try to find the murderer before his final murder.

Was it good?

No. The problem isn't that the movie is especially bad, it's just there isn't anything great in it. The characters aren't particularly interesting, there isn't a great emotional componant to it (like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) did, the actual mystery doesn't have any cool aspect (like SEVEN did), and the ending and reveal just wasn't anything special. There are SOOOOO many detective shows on tv, and this really didn't have anything to separate it from any of them. In fact, a lot of tv shows are better put together and more interesting. Maybe there could have been something interesting here, but they just didn't find it.

*** AVOID ***