Fell Flat

Rating: 1/10 (11 June 2017)

I feel cheated. I adored Emma and Ryan in Crazy Stupid Love, and came in already biased to love it. It's like the writer thought of every cheesy hook that would appeal to an aging,monochromatic academy yearning for former glory days. Then compiled a flat-lined formula, but set the gauge wrong, so that even that ended up being off kilter a bit.
There was a barely discernible arc, way too late in an already glacially paced series of badly shot and neglectfully choreographed pretty young things in colorful clothes.
I just couldn't muster up the energy to care about the leads, let alone the 1 dimensional characters orbiting their lonely planet.
I DID learn one thing. Black folk love jazz, and they have soul, so Ryan must too!
When the film, incongruously skips ahead 5 years,(do people really abandon each other so thoroughly in the age of cellphones?) and we find that fame, has it's price. I thought, well, there's isn't even the emotional payout this film's formula surely promised.
Then there was! I ALMOST felt something for a moment.
Even though it was a derivative montage of fabulous old musicals badly replicated in the alternative universe, still I could have finally cared about the character's fate a smidgen.
Whups, then there wasn't again. I really tried to feel the bittersweet pangs of regret I know I was SUPPOSED to feel.
But that too, flat-lined. Then I was just kind of mad.