A one-trick pony

Rating: 4/10 (27 April 2015)

Years from now when they are writing histories of the Academy Awards, I hope that movie historians are stumped by this year's award of the Best Picture Oscar to this movie, because I certainly was.
This movie has one very over-used gimmick: the camera that follows characters while they are talking and walking very fast, usually down long corridors and often with drum accompaniment. That was sort of interesting the first time. But by the 4th, or 5th, or 10th time, it was really a cliché.
As are these characters. There is the former star who wants to make a comeback in something that makes him look like a real actor. A cliché when Berrymore played it, much better, in Dinner at Eight in the early 1930s. There is the daughter who is all messed up because her father never spent any time with her. There is... All these characters are just complications of clichés.
That leaves us with 2 hours that we have to spend watching the pitiful antics of two destructively self-centered actors, individuals for whom I could generate no sympathy whatsoever because they were totally focused on themselves, to the exclusion of those around them, whom they often hurt.
Why would I care about them? Why would I care about this movie about them? I don't.
And I don't see why you should, either.