Little verisimilitude, too much suspension of disbelief required, boring, not intellectually stimulating

Rating: 4/10 (7 February 2014)

I had very high hopes for this film - due to reviews from both industry critics and lay-people. I'm sorely disappointed. Caveat - I saw this film on an airplane.
The one of the main problems lies in that there is insufficient verisimilitude to compensate for the required suspension of disbelief (e.g. believable characters compensating for poor storyline or vice versa). It's not particularly thrilling nor gripping either. There are also weakly saccharine aspects to this film, which, I suppose, was meant to be subtle human interest. I can't account for the visuals since I saw this film on an airplane.
I thought the characterisation was very poor - I did not feel engaged, neither positively nor negatively, with either of the two main protagonists. Perhaps you need to be from the United States to do so. Given the back story of the characters, there could be so much more. The way that the protagonists back stories impinge upon their characters is very crude, there's little subtlety and nuance. I did not believe that the characters could be real, nor are they interesting, and I felt minimal empathy with them.
The poor characterisation could be compensated by the storyline - I did not find it interesting nor trilling nor gripping nor believable. Again, so much more could have been made of this aspect.
I did not find the film intellectually stimulating. Often, I go away from a film thinking about particular aspects that are posed or suggested. There's little in this film that did this for me (apart from being irritated that I could have been sleeping instead).
The film is so bland that it's akin to being spoon-fed weak saccharine solution. Perhaps other reviewers were distracted by the visuals, which I did not have the benefit of enjoying to the full. As for the reviews from within the industry, I can only surmised that there must be some self-congratulatory aspect clouding judgment. The two main actors are not usually known for this type of film - for the actors to perform in a mediocre way against type must have seemed like a great achievement. It might well be - but that goes to show that the wrong actors were chosen for the roles.