This is where I leave you is a novel by Jonathan Tropper, that was made into a 2014 feature film about a dysfunctional family spending shiva together (even though their not Jewish and one of the parents is an atheist....really.... people change things all of the time in book adaptations you couldn't have made them fully Jewish?)
I never read the book to this movie so I went in completely blind and didn't know what to expect. After walking out of this movie it made me kind of curious about the book and not in the best way. This movie is not one of the worst movies of 2014 but it's pretty bad.
This is where I leave you feels either it was made by an incompetent director, a really bad writer or was completely slashed in editing. I have the feeling it might be a bit of all three. In good book adaptation you can cut things out as long as the movie is still good and keeps to the themes of said book. Now me not reading the book I can't speak about whether or not it kept to the themes but from what I could gather it seemed in line with the book from reading the summary.
Also this is probably the worst structured movie I've ever seen because everything feels disjoined and a complete mess. A lot of information on certain characters and backgrounds that we should know is either not given to us until it's too late so a lot of character actions feels as though it came out of know where or feel really rushed. It doesn't really fix itself until the third act which is the best part of the movie and legitimately great and interesting but you have to trudge through two disastrous acts that the journey to get to the third act is not worth it.
The acting in this movie is alright and everyone is likeable overall. I liked Corey Stoll and Jason Bateman the best, Rose Byrne is one of my favorite so I liked her, Adam Driver was fun, however Jane Fonda and Tina Fey were the weakest parts of the movie. Jane Fonda really doesn't have much to do expect for a third act reveal and a bunch of sex jokes and I did not care for Tina Fey's character. In fact the four siblings barely spend any time together in this movie and it might have been stronger if you cut the sister out and made it about three brothers so you had more time to focus on them.
Jason Bateman has a big problem with his dad in the film who dies but we never get a sense of why other than he was distant and it's very vague and not really fleshed out. On top of that his story is really the only one who gets any sort of a closure, everyone else's stories are left a bit hanging especially Adam Driver's Phillips story line.
Now I did mention the third act as being the best part of the movie and it is, the third act is amazing, that's when the film finally learns how to stand still and give us refreshing takes on old clichés, amazing character development and actually goes in unexpected places. If it weren't for the really no closure ending and horrible first and second act (especially the first act.) The third act is going to be what saves this movie from being on my worst of the year list.
I have a feeling the book is way better and explains shit better and I feel sorry for fans of the book. There are also a lot of lapses in logic that don't make sense.
I give this movie a 4/10~ awesome third act, everything else though is so bad.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/nessaroseboq?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camille.montano.5209
No comments:
Post a Comment