Anyone else seen this? I thought it was pretty great - good acting all around, excellent pacing, interesting story. And my god did Hawaii ever look beautiful…as if I didn’t want to go there before…
I predict this will get quite a few nominations come award season. I don’t think I’ve seen George Clooney quite as good in anything else.
Just bumping in case anyone else out there has seen the movie and feels like chiming in. (Or in case the recommendation convinces anyone to check it out…) I realize it’s not in super-wide release yet. Anyone?
I saw it and did not like it. I know Clooney was attempting to portray disconnected from his emotions, but it came across as flat. I didn’t feel there was enough exposition or whatever to explain why he hated his wife so much. I just didn’t feel connected to his story enough to care.
I know that Payne likes to cast locals, but the mom at the beginning… who had a problem with the younger daughter… I could “see” her acting and that took me out of the story.
Even the wife’s friends… I could see them acting. Know what I mean? Their lines were delivered in a non-believable way.
I thought Clooney was just playing Clooney. Meh.
Judy Greer (right?)? She did a fucking fantastic job. I perceived all kinds of context and believable back story from her performance. I would have loved to see the same caliber from Clooney.
Agree that the depiction of Hawaii was striking. I really was moved by the images of suburban Hawaii. It’s not all surfing and living at the beach.
Overall, yeah, I didn’t like it.
I thought Clooney did a fine job, he sold the character to me.
But I fault the material and direction for the overall flatness. The voice-over at the beginning showed a lack of director skills. IMHO the story lacked overarching conflict and tension. The individual character conflicts seemed by-the-numbers.
Once they established that the wife was going to die it became a slow slog to the end point. The wife was never a real person to us the audience, there was no sympathy, so whenever she was shown on screen it was frankly distracting.
I really enjoyed it. I like Clooney and the supporting cast did a fantastic job. I can understand the criticisms, but I was in the mood to see a movie without car chases or explosions. The soundtrack was perfect and I loved all the locations, even the day-to-day neighborhood shots.
What I want to know is, does George really run like that? He needs a coach. 
The “awkward running scene” seems to be a staple of Payne movies; Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways all have at least one scene where the main character is running flat-footedly.
As for the complaints about flatness, that is also a common theme (and complaint, by some) of his films. It is clearly an affectation; Payne can shoot picturesque outdoor scenes and romantic montages, but when it comes to portraying the story, he gives the sense that you are peeking in on random moments of his characters’ lives. He and co-writer Jim Taylor are clearly less interested in plot than character; the plots of all of the films can be simply described in one or two sentences, but the characters are all very complex, even when they’re highly superficial, as with Warren Schmidt.
Stranger
[Master Thespian]ACTING![/Master Thespian]
I agree, and I really liked Election and About Schmidt. IMO, Clooney just can’t pull it off as well as Broderick and Nicholson.
Whoop, nope, not a thread about one of my all-time favorite bands…
:::Composes post about whale sperm:::
:::checks user name:::
:::Backs away from post, apologetically:::
No need to apologize…unless you’re going to apologize to Bill.
I just saw this yesterday.
I thought it got a lot better in the second half, but overall I was disappointed. There was zero tension with the land deal story line; in fact, it seemed completely superfluous to the movie.
Judy Greer (Kitty!) was the best thing in the movie and she was only on screen for five minutes. The scene where she’s yelling at the wife and the shot cuts to the dying (dead?) wife just lying there with tracheotomy leaking bandage was brutal (in a good way).
It’s not a good sign when the most memorable scene in the whole movie was George Clooney’s awkward running. He should sue Alexander Payne for making him run like my grandpa. I’ll never look at him the same way.
Don’t be so hard on George. He was wearing flip-flops.
I think they were moccasins, but you’re right. Still very distracting.
Also, it was an odd ellipsis when he picked up his drunk daughter and the next scene was him carrying her into his house. Are there still inter-island flights that late?
Saw this Saturday night. I was disappointed.
I like Payne’s movies- Sideways, Election and About Schmidt are sublime and I could watch them repeatedly (and have). This one fell flat for me.
Part of it was I was expecting a different movie from the previews- it was much more depressing than I expected. I agree with the earlier comment that there was very little tension regarding the land deal. I thought Clooney was OK, Shailene Woodley as Alexandra was very good, and Judy Greer stole the picture. The younger daughter, Scottie, looked like she came from a different family- she was poorly cast.
I do have a question though- we had to run out of the theatre during the credit scene, when they were watching March of the Penguins, so we could pick up our kids on time. I have a feeling that wasn’t the last scene, though- did anything happen after that?
No, nothing happened after that. They stayed with the scene a long time, just George and the kids looking at the TV, but eventually it cut to regular credits.
I saw this over the weekend and was disappointed. I didn’t hate it but I was expecting so much more due to the rave reviews it’s been getting. I thought the editing was absolute crap with at least thirty minutes that should have been cut. The whole thing with the younger daughter and her classmate was awkward and unnecessary(and I agree that the"actress" that played the girl’s mother was awful). The dopey boyfriend was annoying and his being there made no sense. Actually, the more I think and write about it the more I remember things I disliked so maybe I did hate it after all:dubious:
I saw it Saturday night & liked it, but then I just returned from a vacation in Hawaii & was playing “identify the location” throughout. Even had lunch at the Tahiti Nui Cafe on Kauai.
I recently went through a family decision similar to the one depicted in the movie, and found it too close for comfort. I’m sure other movie watchers in the cinema wondered why I got so emotional over the hospital scenes.
It was a decent film.
But to be nominated for Best Film of the year by anybody?!
This must be a very bad year for films.
Most above have noticed the nitpicks - but the biggest problem is you don’t really care if the wife lives or dies, so all of the hand wringing and screaming and sadness seem to be hollow. If they had started the film with a least a bit more with the wife - so you would have cared one way or another - it would have made this stronger. As is, the audience doesn’t really care about her any more than they would care about a dying plant in the garden.
I have no idea why all the hype for this film - even Clooney was so-so, and the rest of the actors were no better than what you would find in a made-for-TV movie.
Finally saw this movie on Tuesday – it’s still not in real wide release around here. Or maybe it’s come and gone.
Anyway, I was really looking forward to it but came away disappointed. It wasn’t bad but it didn’t live up to expectations. That’s the second time in a row Clooney has done that to me! (see: Ides of March).
I could have, and probably should have, caught MI4 instead.