I almost need to develop a new vocabulary for how terrible this movie is.
The characters are undeveloped, uninteresting, unmotivated, unbelievable, and unsympathetic. Every role is compromised in the writing to be shallow and flawed, though no reasons other than "life is hard" are given for the flaws.
Does this make the movie "honest"? Hardly. It makes it a montage of clichés and stereotypes, with stilted dialog and horrible acting to go with it. Why do these characters even care about each other, much less me caring about them? That's just for starters. Even within any given scene, there are dialog and emotional inconsistencies. An actual line from what I think was supposed to be a dramatic break-up scene involves a woman opening a door and screaming "GET OUT!" to her husband. Seconds later, she says, "Go on, go if you want to!" What? Do you want him to get out, or go if he wants to? Again, I am sure plenty of folks (I am very negatively astounded that this movie impresses roughly 2/3rds of viewers) will consider that part "suitably confusing" and "true to the emotional nature of the scene". No. Well-written scenes remain consistent while still being packed with drama and real emotion. This was packed with TV-movie quality triteness, written by someone who apparently feels the need to preach at our faces and hit us over the head with how hard life is. Seriously, I have bruises.
Underlying ALL of this aggravating cinema is a distinct feel of victim mentality. EVERY character is playing the victim in this film. Poor me, deciding about marriage is hard. Poor me, holding a marriage together (or not) is hard. Poor me, life is full of temptations. Poor me, I thought I had it all together and now I am using platitudes to try to describe it to the world. Oh dear, it really could not have been a worse movie if it had tried. Maybe it WAS trying to specifically represent the worst way in the world to spend 100 minutes.
The characters are undeveloped, uninteresting, unmotivated, unbelievable, and unsympathetic. Every role is compromised in the writing to be shallow and flawed, though no reasons other than "life is hard" are given for the flaws.
Does this make the movie "honest"? Hardly. It makes it a montage of clichés and stereotypes, with stilted dialog and horrible acting to go with it. Why do these characters even care about each other, much less me caring about them? That's just for starters. Even within any given scene, there are dialog and emotional inconsistencies. An actual line from what I think was supposed to be a dramatic break-up scene involves a woman opening a door and screaming "GET OUT!" to her husband. Seconds later, she says, "Go on, go if you want to!" What? Do you want him to get out, or go if he wants to? Again, I am sure plenty of folks (I am very negatively astounded that this movie impresses roughly 2/3rds of viewers) will consider that part "suitably confusing" and "true to the emotional nature of the scene". No. Well-written scenes remain consistent while still being packed with drama and real emotion. This was packed with TV-movie quality triteness, written by someone who apparently feels the need to preach at our faces and hit us over the head with how hard life is. Seriously, I have bruises.
Underlying ALL of this aggravating cinema is a distinct feel of victim mentality. EVERY character is playing the victim in this film. Poor me, deciding about marriage is hard. Poor me, holding a marriage together (or not) is hard. Poor me, life is full of temptations. Poor me, I thought I had it all together and now I am using platitudes to try to describe it to the world. Oh dear, it really could not have been a worse movie if it had tried. Maybe it WAS trying to specifically represent the worst way in the world to spend 100 minutes.