I'm wondering who it is would find this family interesting? A lot of scenes where the family en route & then on arrival, comes across as loud, brash, ego-centric, stereotypical, not super differentiated from each other, all talking cacophonously & stridently over the top of each other about little of interest ....the deceased sister never really 'comes alive' in any meaningful way.....the supposed grief the family are experiencing never feels palpable or believable .....when the husband of the deceased complains about the family being such a tight closed unit, with all of their in house jokes, does he not know how lucky he is? To be an in-house member of such a family is to be condemned to superficial mediocrity but who knows, perhaps there are many Americans who can identify with this family.....I certainly cannot...but I'm not American and have always felt alienated by the oft portrayed assumption in film....although not overtly in this film, of the USA as the greatest nation on earth .....it is only covertly present in this film, if the people who made it anticipated a more global audience. Grief is universal but the discordant, self-absorbed, almost self congratulatory dynamic at work in this family with its inane humour, alienate the viewer from whatever grief the family is supposed to be processing ....I would go out of my way to avoid people for whom it is habitual to interact in the somewhat mindless manner portrayed here and sorry to the people behind this film, but this one was the straw that broke the camel's back.....the one where I thought, 'I can't watch another set of brash egocentric humans all talking over the top of each other and assuming what they have to say is interesting'....,note it's taken 6 decades to get here!
I kept going bc of 1) the music ....thoughtfully chosen & appropriate & in its thoughtfulness leading me to think there could be something worthwhile about to unfold & 2) a scene where the youngest sibling hides something in the deceased's bedroom.... I naively thought it was pointing to a murdered cover up & was waiting for this to unfold ...in a word, the family was too shallow for me to relate to & their grief, when it arose, not convincing & not moving.
I kept going bc of 1) the music ....thoughtfully chosen & appropriate & in its thoughtfulness leading me to think there could be something worthwhile about to unfold & 2) a scene where the youngest sibling hides something in the deceased's bedroom.... I naively thought it was pointing to a murdered cover up & was waiting for this to unfold ...in a word, the family was too shallow for me to relate to & their grief, when it arose, not convincing & not moving.