Directed by Jonas Elmer
Starring: Harry Connick Jr. and Renee Zellweger
Typically I reserve reviews for those movies which a) I see in theaters b) I find really entertaining or c) are monumentally terrible.
This happens to fall into the latter. Now I should state that I am not much of a Renee Zellweger fan. I think her best performance to date was in Cinderella Man and she was adequate in Chicago and Me, Myself & Irene, but I think she is generally overrated and the fact she won an Oscar for Cold Mountain makes me cringe.
So as you can see leading into this movie there was not much hope for me liking this movie. I decided to try out the idea from my last post (Grading based on expectations) I expected this to grade out in the 4-6 range. Which means my expectations were fairly low though not close to being low enough.
Acting (4 - Below Average): I am sure there are days when I come to work and I do not perform as well as the day before. Everyone is like that and to some extent you could there are days when (by no fault of my own) little is accomplished. That describes the acting in this film. While I would not classify the acting portion as unwatchable it was definitely sub par. That said this is where this particular movie shines (that is not a good thing). In all honesty I liked JK Simmons, like always, and Siobhan Fallon did a decent job (above average for her).Audio / Visual (1 - Unwatchable): While the camera work could be classified as average the polka music that plays throughout is a HUGE distraction and annoyance. Its not even the fact that its polka that's bothersome, but the particular songs that were chosen. The audio portion of this film lends itself to the rating chosen.
Plot (1 - Unwatchable): So a female business professional comes into the board meeting late, wearing 6 inch heels and a tight fitting dress and is provided the opportunity to become vice president by turning around the operations of a small food production plant. Oh if it were only that simple. This script contains pretty much everything a bad script should have, predictability, unfunny jokes, poor character background, and terrible dialogue. There is really no redeeming quality to this plot, at all. And will someone please tell Hollywood that the whole I "I don't like you, but I really do like you, but I am not going to tell you or show you until I get drunk and then I will try to hit on you thing" has been done about 5 billion times to many. And the whole widower raising kids is overplayed too (no offense to those people who are actually in this situation). For as many times as I have seen this in film there must be a huge population of guys in this situation that I don't know about...yes I am talking to you Disney.
Entertainment (2 - Terrible): I'm not sure there is anything else I can say about this film other than don't spend the $1 at red box to rent it.
Overall (2 - Terrible)
I do not know who would be more offended by this movie, female business professionals, people from Minnesota, or the people that actually watched this film. I tried hard to find an actual budget for this film to see how much Hollywood threw away, but I couldn't find it. It's sad to think that a movie like Slumdog Millionaire almost doesn't happen yet trash like this gets picked up and filmed all the time.
