Terrible, terrible, terrible film

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2015)

Sorry to rain on the JLaw parade that seems to be going on out there among her fans, but this movie strikes me as if the director realized that all he'd have to do to create a film that would make a bunch of cash at the box office is point a camera at Jennifer Lawrence. He wouldn't need a script, he wouldn't need believable characters, and he certainly wouldn't need to do very much in terms of direction. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly the approach he took to making the movie.
I found the first third of the film almost unwatchable. As a filmmaker, you know you're in trouble (or you *should* know, anyway) that when the intentionally-horrible soap opera characters in your intentionally-horrible soap-opera-within-the-soap-opera are more interesting and more sympathetic than your main characters that you're in deep trouble. The second third of the movie wasn't much better -- more soap opera family drama queenery. *Nothing* of any interest happened for me until about the 1 hour 37 minute mark. Sorry, but in a 1 hour and 53 minute movie, that's just WAY too long to wait to see if it's actually going to turn into a movie. BIG "thumbs down."