It Thinks It's a Smart Satire But It's Mostly a Flimsy Farce

Rating: 3/10 (5 January 2016)

Ben Affleck has a few compelling, convincing scenes where his boyish innocence and modest charm are exploited to considerable effect, as though daring me to believe anything coming out of his mouth. Rosamund Pike's performance is much more ineffectual and troubling; Miss Pike is clearly just as new to and unfamiliar with the character she's playing as we are. Rather than eliciting profound wonder at the impossibly fickle and treacherous mystery that is the scorned female psyche, Pike's portrayal only manages to provoke some mild ire and a lot of disbelief. I simply couldn't tolerate what that scheming spouse--as well as the rest of this dumb movie--was demanding of my patience. Too much, man.
The production values are sufficiently high that its appearance and soundtrack are both fairly seductive. I was drawn in more by the luxury of their lives than through the lead characters' personalities. Almost right from the start I wasn't buying what this disingenuous and manipulative film was emphatically, desperately selling.
I was initially interested, mildly, with how this lumbering, plodding schlock fest would resolve itself only because I quickly became aware that it would require a tremendously skillful and tactful twist to bestow any sort of honor upon itself, but no, it merely continues to lamely drone on and on, wallowing in its own inflated sense of importance. It's a clunky, corny, spastic, tone deaf, silly sham of a cinematic experience. If you're entertained or even amused by this overly clever, self fascinated triviality then that says some pretty unappealing things about you. Perhaps you enjoy being cynically conned and openly mocked? Me, not so much.
Sitting through this too-ridiculous-by-a-half stunt of a film is more daunting than actually being married to the cunning manipulative psychopath into which Rosamund Pike's stoic anti-hero methodically morphs. "You're delusional!" Ben Affleck's outwitted, out maneuvered husband accuses his crafty spouse, as though the thought hadn't already occurred to us. He complains that their relationship has become something very bad, something very nasty--I dunno exactly, I stopped paying much attention by that point--and she replies so mechanically "That's marriage." Wow, hysterical. Or not. Who knows, or cares. Not me.