I have not yet watched the entire film, and I suspect that I won't. After about twenty minutes I was already bored, irritated, and angry. Angry? Mainly because this film is so much of a sop to "childhood"... especially when it is an upper-middle class variety (as if Hollywood couldn't interest itself in any thing less except once a decade....)
The opening is pretty much stolen from To Kill A Mockingbird, exhibiting the "magical" toys of childhood... except that in Mockingbird the toys had more significance to the plot and the music was haunting and set a perfect mood for the story. Here, all it is is filler... it's supposed to be "magical" (yes, that word again... ho hum.)
Then we have Elle Fanning... who the camera loves and unfortunately the director does too... which is OK if you aren't being asked to play every cliché in the book. The ideas are telescoped, the "suspense" is unwarranted because we KNOW (SPOILER? Ya gotta be kidding...) that Phoebe will get the part (after all look at the title) and even something like walking in front of the sign-up list, wondering whether or not to do it, is drawn out, like many other sequences, more than it needs to be.
And Patricia Clarkson, in the first twenty minutes, seems to playing everything on one note. Miss Zen for the the decade. One child asks "Are you asleep?"... She may not be, but she certainly is putting me in Slumberland.
The only surprise to me so far is that it was written by a guy... it seems to be so female-oriented and chick-flick-ish that it really IS a surprise that the director/writer is a guy; hmmm maybe he's gay? That might explain it...and a few other things in the film which I won't give away. (Ha! Just looked him up and I was bang on... not that his being gay is a problem in any way - I am too - but it explains a few things immediately.)
I guess what irritates the most is that it is playing too much to the PC crowd...he is almost certainly going to hit on every acceptable liberal theme. Again, this isn't a problem in itself - hell, I'm on the left too - but it is too formulaic. Where's the edge? Imagine if the script had been written by someone with real imagination like John Cameron Mitchell (of Shortbus).
Need I go on? No, because the people who will like this film are exactly the ones it was made for. It isn't challenging us. At least not for the first 25 minutes. I guess I'll go back and see if it makes me eat my words, but I doubt that I'll need Kleenex, except to perhaps wipe up after I've up-chucked.
The opening is pretty much stolen from To Kill A Mockingbird, exhibiting the "magical" toys of childhood... except that in Mockingbird the toys had more significance to the plot and the music was haunting and set a perfect mood for the story. Here, all it is is filler... it's supposed to be "magical" (yes, that word again... ho hum.)
Then we have Elle Fanning... who the camera loves and unfortunately the director does too... which is OK if you aren't being asked to play every cliché in the book. The ideas are telescoped, the "suspense" is unwarranted because we KNOW (SPOILER? Ya gotta be kidding...) that Phoebe will get the part (after all look at the title) and even something like walking in front of the sign-up list, wondering whether or not to do it, is drawn out, like many other sequences, more than it needs to be.
And Patricia Clarkson, in the first twenty minutes, seems to playing everything on one note. Miss Zen for the the decade. One child asks "Are you asleep?"... She may not be, but she certainly is putting me in Slumberland.
The only surprise to me so far is that it was written by a guy... it seems to be so female-oriented and chick-flick-ish that it really IS a surprise that the director/writer is a guy; hmmm maybe he's gay? That might explain it...and a few other things in the film which I won't give away. (Ha! Just looked him up and I was bang on... not that his being gay is a problem in any way - I am too - but it explains a few things immediately.)
I guess what irritates the most is that it is playing too much to the PC crowd...he is almost certainly going to hit on every acceptable liberal theme. Again, this isn't a problem in itself - hell, I'm on the left too - but it is too formulaic. Where's the edge? Imagine if the script had been written by someone with real imagination like John Cameron Mitchell (of Shortbus).
Need I go on? No, because the people who will like this film are exactly the ones it was made for. It isn't challenging us. At least not for the first 25 minutes. I guess I'll go back and see if it makes me eat my words, but I doubt that I'll need Kleenex, except to perhaps wipe up after I've up-chucked.