Not Cassavetes...

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2004)

Okay...I understand the genre, have internationally traveled etc. etc. etc., and I can relate to most if not all the criticisms as well as some of the praise here.
One thing I will say is that the critics seem to have it and in this case clearly explain their boredom much better and to a greater extent than the yaysayers who explain that the rest of us just don't get it etc. etc. and I have to wonder without all the great connections Sofia Coppola has...would this film ever had been made?
This is not the Godfather and to have even put her in the same league as her old man is insulting to what he did. What I will say in praise though, is that this does not seem a sophomoric effort at film-making. The "Virgin Suicides" did not either and was more fascinating for me, though this certainly does not lose merit.
One of the top 250 of all time rated here, however? Was there anything groundbreaking in this work except the fact that she made boredom much more beautiful than say Todd Haynes "Safe?" Outside of the wildly imaginative reviews that see something so deep inside this that cause others to go "say what?" I found it also boring.
Yes I know much of life is, but it has been represented in much better, and thought out ways (or with no forethought perhaps at all), at least for my opinion and review, like in the works of Alan Ball in "American Beauty," or his new HBO series "Six feet under," or the works of John Cassavetes in which my favorite, "A Woman under the influence," had so much potential to make us look at life's boring aspects and remind Hollywood "uh hello-you do want us to pay for this right?"
Sometimes it's a matter of something on which we cannot put our finger. All we can say is "this was dull, boring and/or I don't/didn't like it." On this level, I can say that at least Cassavetes created characters we the viewers cared about (and remember Hollywood didn't always see him in the light he is viewed today...)Coppola created characters here that a lot of viewers eventually came to loathe.
For example, Murray's character was seen as "boo-hoo, I'm so bored here earning my crummy 2 million dollars...," where at least Johansson had an excuse...
Still, most people rather than allow themselves to feel trapped in a foreign land might at least try to get out and understand the culture and experience a little beyond trying to make everything their own and look for the nearest McDonald's (which is pretty damn disgusting in its own right) as one reviewer observed.
No, I did not expect young Miss Coppola to make this for my sake nor Hollywood's and though I find it all political, I have to wonder if this was part of her purpose and therefore brilliant, i.e. did she want to choose and create characters with whom we would find utter disgust by the film's end? Again, in referring to Cassavetes, at least by the movie's end, we had empathy and cared about the characters, even if we did not relate to them.
Here all we could think was "when is he going to jump this hot young thing's bones?" Well maybe this was just my observation...and clichéd or not, it certainly would have made things more interesting and real since both characters were up for a good roll...
If you want reality with flair, take a look somewhere else like in "American Movie" or "American Splendor." (hey, what the heck..three movies with "American" at the forefront..!). If you want to fall asleep and see until that point what all the fuss was about, take a look at this fish out of water, and groundbreaking or not on fronts, it was still like a mouthful of barium chalk. "Sedative out of water" would have been a much better title for this work.
I hope she creates people we can at least care about in the next one, because all I wanted to do was see Murray crashing through the skyscraper window with about as much enthusiasm as I can muster, like Julianne Moore's character's head into a wall in "Safe."
Of course that's just me. I expect to at least be entertained for my $7.50...