Thoroughly Unpleasant From Start To Finish

Rating: 2/10 (12 April 2009)

As I suspect many people were, I was drawn to this movie primarily out of curiosity, wanting to see the "great reunion" - Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunited 11 years after their blockbuster starring turns in "Titanic" - with Kathy Bates thrown into the mix as well. There's no doubt that DiCaprio and Winslet have some powerful scenes together, but this movie is about as far removed from "Titanic" as any movie could possibly be. In this movie set in the 50's, they play the Wheelers - Frank and April - a young couple trying to make their way in the world, dissatisfied with life, with marriage, with each other and with pretty much everything else. They hatch a scheme for Frank to quit a job he hates to allow the family to move to Paris to let him "discover" himself while she supports them. Things seem to improve for a while, but the plan falls apart, and eventually so does everything else in their lives. The Wheelers are not a pleasant couple to watch or listen to, and, by the end of the movie, pretty much everybody else is sending the message "I don't want to talk about the Wheelers any more." They do have those handful of powerful, raw with (negative) emotion scenes, but in the absence of that anger (which sometimes seemed to border on hatred) Frank and April are actually pretty dry together, which might make a valid point about the state of their marriage, but which isn't very interesting to watch. In the end, I just found them to be unpleasant characters in an unpleasant movie. This certainly isn't a movie I would recommend to anyone. 2/10