Includes spoilers Well, I was pretty much underwhelmed by the film.
The premise of the tale is of three people who decide to undertake a simple blackmailing of a local dark-horse reverend. Of course, what starts of as a fairly simple plan goes disastrously wrong by incrementing degrees.
OK, not the most original idea, but what was so much better handled in films such as the Ladykillers, and Welcome to Collinwood is careless & sloppy here.
The film divides itself neatly into two halves. The first half, being all set inside the targeted rev.'s house. I personally felt that there was a lot more potential here, as the conceits, plot twists and cases of mistaken identity (not to mention the body-count) pile up. The second half involved an increasingly elaborate plot to dispose of the bodies left over from the first half of the film. Here's where I lost interest.
Two things happened that made me just despair. The first being the introduction of the diabetic coroner. The second being the 'big twist' around Josie's character.
Aside from the fact that the usually brilliant Simon Pegg seemed like a shell of a comedy actor without Nick Frost, and that David Shwimmer's gamut of emotions have been better used in episodes of "Friends" (He just seems to wear the same 'Oh Gee!' face in every scene!), none of the characters have any charisma. They are all bland, relatively uninteresting, and seem almost embarrassed to be involved. The rest of the supporting cast have too little screen time (usually because they are bumped off scant minutes after they appear), but even those who do have more than 3 lines in the film make such a poor attempt at their roles, that it is uncomfortable to watch.
It's a shame, because there is a lot of potential here.
I wouldn't even worry about the raging debate as to whether Simon Pegg's American accent was any good or not. In a film that just doesn't engage on any level, whether or not his accent is up to scratch is a very moot point.
The premise of the tale is of three people who decide to undertake a simple blackmailing of a local dark-horse reverend. Of course, what starts of as a fairly simple plan goes disastrously wrong by incrementing degrees.
OK, not the most original idea, but what was so much better handled in films such as the Ladykillers, and Welcome to Collinwood is careless & sloppy here.
The film divides itself neatly into two halves. The first half, being all set inside the targeted rev.'s house. I personally felt that there was a lot more potential here, as the conceits, plot twists and cases of mistaken identity (not to mention the body-count) pile up. The second half involved an increasingly elaborate plot to dispose of the bodies left over from the first half of the film. Here's where I lost interest.
Two things happened that made me just despair. The first being the introduction of the diabetic coroner. The second being the 'big twist' around Josie's character.
Aside from the fact that the usually brilliant Simon Pegg seemed like a shell of a comedy actor without Nick Frost, and that David Shwimmer's gamut of emotions have been better used in episodes of "Friends" (He just seems to wear the same 'Oh Gee!' face in every scene!), none of the characters have any charisma. They are all bland, relatively uninteresting, and seem almost embarrassed to be involved. The rest of the supporting cast have too little screen time (usually because they are bumped off scant minutes after they appear), but even those who do have more than 3 lines in the film make such a poor attempt at their roles, that it is uncomfortable to watch.
It's a shame, because there is a lot of potential here.
I wouldn't even worry about the raging debate as to whether Simon Pegg's American accent was any good or not. In a film that just doesn't engage on any level, whether or not his accent is up to scratch is a very moot point.