It's a cookbook! And we all just got conned!

Rating: 4/10 (25 January 2014)

FOUR STARS OUTA TEN! Like the classic Twilight Zone Episode "To Serve Man," this film isn't what the trailers, Golden Globes, and Academy Awards want you to believe. I'm 60 and remember Abscam and the seventies. Even with that background knowledge, the film didn't engage me, or move me, or even make me laugh. It was grim, stupid, and boring. My teenage daughter texted the whole time. We had seen the clever trailers during the summer, most focusing on Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. In retrospect, the trailers were conning us to think it was another Silver Linings Playbook. The trailers certainly did not convey this dreck of a film. The pacing was agonizingly slow and should be studied in film schools as how to NOT do pacing. There was no protagonist and that should be studied in film school as how to NOT emote any sympathy for any character. The acting by Amy Adams was intriguing but we did not wear braless, low cleavage outfits ALL THE TIME in seventies so the wardrobe people got it all wrong. It's insane that Amy Adams won the Golden Globes best actress award over Dame Judi Dench in Philomena or Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks. Also insane is the over-the-top scene-shredding acting by Jennifer Lawrence actually won Best Supporting Actress. More inexplicable is this flick winning the Golden Globes Best Picture over Saving Mr. Banks, Philomena, Catching Fire, Dallas Buyer's Club, Blue Jasmine, Twelve Years A Slave, and Captain Phillips. The Foreign Press Association got it all wrong and if they give awards to a movie of this caliber then they are tools of Big Hollywood who's purpose is to give awards to up and coming actors so movies can make a mint on the next mediocre flick they churn out with the same up and coming actors. The only bright spots in the film are Jeremy Renner and Said Yaghaoui. Otherwise - pffft. The film is just meh.