Stepped Into the Wrong Room!

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2019)

I can appreciate all the critical love for Room, even if I can't agree with it.
What I can subscribe to, is that the film is anchored by two wonderful central performances from Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay.
And though I haven't read Emily Donoghue's adapted novel, I applaud director Lenny Abrahamson's reported decision to upgrade Ma's role for the screen version. For me, it's the complex character of Ma/Joy that holds major interest, rather than 5 year old Jack, through whose perspective we view much of the action. We are told very early on in the second of two clearly defined halves of Room, that young Jacob is resilient and very likely to shake off the effects of 5 years of confinement with his mother. We (at least me anyway) don't need huge amounts of onscreen time devoted to watching Jack atune to his new environment. It's here the film really falls down, with a now plodding pace, as Ma disappears from the screen for very large tracts of time.
Of far more importance and interest was exploring the more edgy personality of Ma and the vast challenges, which are really only paid lip service, on her repatriation from capture. A bit of a spat with her mum and a testy TV interview and all of a sudden Joy disappears for way too much of the second half, when things were just starting to get interesting.
Without turning Room into a police procedural, I think the movie could have spent a little more time following up the arrest (and likely conviction) of Old Nick. His character generates much of the suspense and he goes virtually unreferenced in the film's second half. In fact the only indirect link is when Ma and Jack return to the room with the police at the end of the film. It looks so ramshackle and flimsy, that even I found myself wondering how Joy had not really managed to create any other escape attempts. It just didn't have the appearance of a virtual escape-proof cell.
Room is an unconventional and very professionally produced vehicle about a none too uncommon issue which has affected many women and children over the years. But for me any thriller/suspense elements disappeared when characters such as Ma and Old Nick were off screen, so as to allow an unfettered, somewhat repetitive look at Jack, adjusting to his brave, new world.