Barber Vs. Barber

Rating: 1/10 (3 January 2020)

A couple gets divorced and lawyers are a**holes. There, that's the movie. I watched the first 25 minutes, then skipped around a bit and overall sat thru a good four-fifths of it while writing this review. This is just every divorce/troubled marriage movie ever made: Kramer Vs. Kramer, The Possession, Scenes from a Marriage, like half of what Woody Allen does. More boring everyday banality, a movie heavily in debt to the aforementioned Bergman and Allen (Alan Alda, who starred in Allen's 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' appears here as a lawyer. Scarlett also appeared in two of his movies) but nowhere near as good, no matter how badly it wants to be. A lot of it is courtroom proceedings/lawyer meetings and talk talk talk that I frequently spaced out during. Of course there's the "powerful! Gripping! oh so moving!" argument scene like you've seen in all the aforementioned movies, and it doesn't really go anywhere at the end. I'm getting fed up with Noah Baumbach's mediocrity. He may be a fine writer, but a pretty unexciting director. He's trying too hard to be Woody Allen (his debut was the infuriatingly boring time-waste "Francis Ha!", which was very Manhattan-esque), but without the humor and nostalgic charm of Allen's early work. This adds absolutely nothing new - screw the hype - I'll probably forget this one in a week.