This is an independent movie? No, it is what a studio gets when they force Hollywood ideology on an independent production. For starters, I am sick to think that this script was the best out of over 15,000 scripts that were submitted in the Project Greenlight competition. Second, the direction in the movie is far from anything gritty or original. A generic style of anything basic, Shaker Heights is more of a student film with Hollywood production value than anything gritty or truly independent. Third, the casting of this film was hit and miss. Half of the actors were excellent while the other half simply read their lines from the script and nothing else. A simple rule in movie making that this production failed to follow was the relationship of the leading role with the movie. Your leading man . woman must identify with some percentage of the audience. If nobody understand what the character is going through, they don't care. Not only does the leading character fail to progress or change as a person by the end of the movie, but the characters motivation is pointless and the audience loses interest with him before we reach the half way point. If this was a low budget and a true independent film, I could see not being so negative. But I can't. If you spend over 1 million dollars and you have professional cast and crew members working for you, it is your job to produce a good film. Shaker Heights is not a good film. My two cents.
Review of The Battle of Shaker Heights
