The Savages
Starring: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775529/
This review contains minor spoilers.
I really wanted to enjoy this movie. I went in thinking I would love it, after seeing the trailers, reading reviews from sundance and the fact that it had a lot of award buzz. I have been looking forward to the DVD release for awhile so that I could finally see the film. The expirience that I had during and after watching this movie was the complete opposite of what I had expected. I did not enjoy this movie at all.
The movie was not all bad; and by that I mean it had one redeeming aspect, the acting. The acting in this movie was simply great, though I expected nothing less from these two leads who have never failed to impress me. There was one scene in particular that really pushed it for me. Our leads are in Hoffman’s house, he has just hurt his back or spine or something and is in some weird contraption that seems to pull his head away from his body. The scene is simple enough with both leads just sitting there talking but it had some phenomenal acting and I was pretty impressed.
Amazing acting alone however, can’t make a movie bearable and if this had been any generic movie I would have stopped watching after 15 minutes. I kept watching because I had looked forward to it for so long and thanks to the Oscar nomination I wanted to see it through to the end. I half expected it to surprise me and suddenly become watchable but that never happened. Even at the end when they try to do some sort of resolution where everything worked out and all the characters are better off I still wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t care that the characters were doing good, nor that everything had worked out since I wasn’t attached to any of the characters in the first place. I had no emotional investment.
This review is extremely short by my standards and the only reason for that is the fact that this movie didn’t have enough good points to warrant a longer review, but neither was it so bad that I could pick it apart. There wasn’t any definingly “bad” aspect, it was just one of those movies that left you with a bad taste in your mouth. The only people i would recommend this movie to would be those who want to see it simply for the fact that it had award worthy acting.
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