Review of August Weekend

A poor man's "Dinner at Eight", this poverty row drawing room drama is filled with mainly unlikable characters truly living an imitation of life. There are simply too many people to try and keep track of their own individual soap operas, and this takes the storyline all over the map with no chance whatsoever of getting it back on track. While the storyline development is definitely sound, it is written so lethargically that the situations never ring true. Family patriarch Paul Harvey insists that the most important things in his life are money and power, and is cheating on his wife in addition to obviously cheating the government. Their children are also involved in pathetically selfish lives, entangled along with both Harvey's employees from the business and estate. The storyline has a potential of swinging into high gear in a party sequence where they get together to play a murder mystery game, but this just leads to a boring plot twist involving a stolen necklace. For the most part, all the women seem extremely alike and spend more time trying to bring each other down through insults and never rising above their own pathetic natures. A wise gardener makes an attempt to provide some moral to the story, but with his daughter involved in all of the family intrigue, this is just exposed as a trashy dime store novel where too much drama in too short of a time leaves a hollow feeling that the film never recovers from.