The One That Got Away

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2004)

BusterLA speaks for me. I like happy films & happy endings but they have to be grounded in characters you care about, and none of the characters in this movie are interesting, attractive or even make sense. The ensemble actors cope very well with their caricatures, lending weight to what otherwise would be a flimsy movie. Still, you need a writer and an actor and a cameraman, and the writer is missing. (Spoiler) Like the son, we are led from an initial suspension of disbelief to skepticism based on impossible and unlikely aspects of the father's stories. While the
impossibilities are never removed, some of the unlikely aspects are later presented as true. So what? These never speak to the issue of the father's character, and so the son's (and our solicited) conversion to trust and love of the father is unpersuasive. No crisis, no resolution, no catharsis.