Room - Movie Review

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2016)

Ma: "You're gonna love it".
Jack: "What?".
Ma: "The world".
Room tells the story of a relationship between a mother and son, as she raises him while confined to a 10x10 room and what happens when they finally get out.
Since the 2016 Oscars are on Sunday and I've been lacking quite a bit on seeing as many Oscar contenders from last year. Room was one of those movies, as I've heard nothing but great things about it and how truly unique it is (from what I heard). It was a real shame that I had to wait for a while to get a chance to watch this movie, because it's been a very slow month over here in jolly good England. But after finally seeing the movie after that long wait, I can say that the movie was pretty underwhelming, and that's really disappointing saying that.
Brie Larson has been sweeping the award season this year, by taking home: The BAFTA, Golden Globe, Critics Choice award and the SAG award, and it's very deserving. Brie Larson delivered a tremendous performance and she was without a doubt the best part of this movie. I'm so happy that Larson is finally getting noticed since everyone pretty much forgot about "Short Term 12" and her performance in that film that got very unnoticed. Larson shows off her acting skills in this movie and I know for a fact that she will receive an Oscar on Sunday night. She was truly brilliant in this movie and one of her best performance so far.
Lenny Abrahamson (director of the movie) brought us the 2014 film "Frank", which I really liked and I couldn't wait to see want he will bring to this movie, and what he brought was somewhat of a mix bag for me. I'm happy for him to get an Oscar nomination, but I didn't find anything that special or groundbreaking when it came to it's directing. Most of it is just copy and past from the book that this movie is based on, so Abrahamson can look on what he's doing. I didn't read the book (and never will) but I've heard a lot of people who did read the book say that the book is better than the movie, and even the author herself said the same thing. The directing isn't anything Oscar worthy, but it's decent directing at best for Abrahamson.
The first act of this movie was very strong and it did kept my interest. That's the biggest positive I had for this movie is it's first act.
Jacob Tremblay is an unknown star to me and for everyone else, so this is basically he's break out role. I did look up on what Tremblay has been in before and I found out he was in "The Smurfs 2" which wasn't that good. But all that aside, I thought he's performance was alright, nothing outstanding, but nothing terrible. He's better than most kids I've seen in recent movies, but I also have seen better ones as well.
Now for the problems: The second act wasn't as strong as the first act. The movie did lose me a couple of times as I became disinterest as it went along.
The movie did feel like a sugar-coated version of the book and as I said before I haven't even read the book, but for what I heard from other people, the book is more graphic and dark than the movie. I get this question asked a lot when I say the movie sugar-coated from the book, "Would you rather have graphic scenes of rape from the book", well if that's what the book is suppose to be, then yeah, and it's not because I want to see someone get raped, but if you what me to give a crap about the characters and their struggle to see how their suffered, then the film makers shouldn't have sugar-coated it. I feel like if this movie was handled by a different director, it would have been a much better movie. The movie is basically telling you that there's violence and rape that happened, but there's nothing really graphic about it. The movie tells you to care about things that it never bothers developing and if you are going to make a movie on a subject like that, and pretend that this horrible thing that happened, again, you shouldn't sugar-coat it. Take "12 Years a Slave" as an example: That movie was graphic, brutal, honest and that's what made it an amazing movie, because it took a real life story like slavery that's suppose to make you feel for the character's and makes you look at what their been through and say to yourself "Wow, that was truly awful". Now look at Room, we have a single character and the movie is telling you to feel bad for her and what shes been through, but it didn't show any of it, and it's not like it has to be graphic for the sake of it, but it didn't even try to develop it.
Overall Room was very overwhelming and kind of bland. I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for not loving this movie as they do, but that's just my opinion.