Every once and a while a movie comes along that works on nearly every level, but just doesn’t grab you for some reason. “August: Osage County” is funny, expertly acting, finely scripted, well-directed, etc. but I just didn’t feel really compelled by anything I was watching on screen. Maybe it’s the fact that from the outset, the family is set up as a pack of vipers with a lot of (barely) buried secrets, and it kind of undercuts the tension of any story when you don’t much care what happens to the characters. From what we see, the most likable character on screen dies in the first ten minutes, and after that the only rooting audience emotion is wanting the various family members to flee from each other, but is that really enough feeling for a character-drama?
What Works: Sam Shepard is subtly moving in his few scenes. Juliette Lewis and Dermot Mulroney’s flashier characters add a little bit of pizazz to the grim proceedings. Benedict Cumberpatch and Juliette Nicholson are touching but muted. And Margo Martindale with Chris Cooper is the real power couple of the movie. She displays the steel and cunning that’s made her a cable star (on Justified and The Americans) and he’s the movie’s real center of decency.
What Doesn’t: I felt that Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep’s flashier roles were the weakest in the movie. Streep is asked to play a hammy character, but it feels a little cartoony compared to everyone else around her. I’m not saying it’s the easiest job, but I also didn’t truly believe anything that was coming out of her character’s mouth. And Ewan McGregor is hopelessly one-upped as the oddball to the proceedings. He just feel like a guy who shouldn’t even be in that room with those actors, and gets dwarfed in the process.
What I Would Have Done Differently: I’ve never seen the play the film is based on, and Streep’s matriarch is supposed to be one of the great theater characters of the last decade, but something about her doesn’t translate well to the screen. This needed to be fine-tuned a little better for the adaptation, as could the very last scene.