There is one reason to watch this movie: the cast. This is one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last movies ever, and I couldn't help but think of him saying that actors should grab at every opportunity to practice their craft - no matter how good or bad the script or big or small the check. He certainly proved it with Happiness. I didn't bother to write a review for it, but that movie seriously sucked.
This movie didn't suck nearly as bad, but not for lack of not trying. The whole movie seemed like it was being cranked out as an art project for a graduate film course - it had the makings of something interesting, but it just couldn't seem to get out of its own way to make the story move well enough or the characters to be likable enough to engage the audience.
Philip is married to the very talented and beautiful Christina Hendricks. She has a son from a previous relationship played by Caleb Landry Jones who is a character with a single dimension who dies quickly. This is just one of the many storylines that they work on throughout this movie, but it's basically the main one. John Turturro and Eddie Marsan play guys who try to help find out what happened to the kid while Richard Jenkins played the aging newspaper reporter who reluctantly kind of looks into it himself.
Usually, the characters in these things that are writers (and there are a LOT of stories about writers that get made into movies) wind up writing stuff that outright sucks. Writers trying to be profound when writing for writers in movies always comes off as a writer's reach exceeding his or her grasp. They want to sound majestic and fluid, but they are essentially in the echo chamber of their own heads, and that leads to some odd and bad stuff. In this movie, however, the things that they write for the newspaper columnist is pretty damn good. It's a bit too much at times, but it's still pretty damn good.
The comedy in this movie seems like it muddles up the drama, and the drama muddles up the comedy. If they could have gotten some of the writers from The Guard on this movie, it might have stood a good chance of actually being a hit. Well, it would have stood a chance of being a better movie, that's for sure.
Story was weak
Acting was good
Dialog was good
Directing was not great
Editing was unnoteworthy
Bottom Line: A kind of bland film - rich with talent, but it's wasted on this script and mediocre direction.
2.0/5