Okay, so this movie is a microscopic indie that pretty much bombed out in theaters a couple weeks back. [It opened very limited and still had a lousy per-theater average which is all that matters for indies.] And yet…I saw it when it opened and feel compelled to at least throw out a review.
What Works: This movie is about two long married couples (Oliver Platt/Allison Janney, and Hugh Laurie/Catherine Keener) who are absolute best friends on Long Island with now grown kids (Adam Brody and Alia Shawkat are Laurie/Keener’s kids, and Leighton Meester plays the wilder, “trouble making” daughter of Platt/Janney). Trouble starts when Meester begins dating Laurie’s character who is going through marital problems but isn’t divorced or even officially separated from Keener. Naturally, Janney’s meddling mother finds out about this almost immediately and tells everyone, detonating a bomb into the lives of this close-knit group.
This is a pretty okay, original setup for a movie and the movie does a fine job with it. The characters are believable and you really get the sense that these are people that do have a real history, instead of the movie just telling us they do…which, of course, only heightens the situation. The performances are all subtle and nuanced, with Laurie in particular shining as a basically good-guy trying to balance what he wants with what everyone around him wants.
What Doesn’t Work: This thing is a little too low-key and subtle. I had a hard time remembering it the next day, let alone three weeks later. And there’s a curious lack of energy from this movie, with some scenes and setups dragging on too long while others are blown over too quickly. For example, it was probably a mistake to let all of the characters in on Laurie/Meester’s “affair” when they had barely even kissed, it robs a movie about infidelity of its erotic charge and Laurie/Meester’s characters never develop into two people who look like they could share an ice cream cone, let alone a dirty secret.
What I Would Have Done Differently: All of the movie’s relationships are believable except for the most important one: the “affair” between Meester and Laurie. And that’s kind of a big deal since it’s the catalyst that drives all of the action. So I’d work on that and build up. The movie’s short enough (it’s barely an hour and a half long), so there’s plenty of room to grow that aspect.