I simply couldn't get into this film

Rating: 2/10 (9 August 2016)

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) has recently been released from prison and returns to his family home to discover that his family have been kicked off their land as it has been bought out by greedy developers. Joad and his family head to California to start a new life, but this journey proves to have more hazards and pitfalls than they could ever have anticipated.
The Grapes Of Wrath is a film adaptation based on the John Steinbeck novel. I'll start by saying that I haven't read the book, but I can safely say that the 'cinematic' version of the book fell well below my expectations....
For starters the film takes an immensely long time to get going (one could actually argue as to whether it ever gets going). The problem is that the first half is awfully slow and dull with very little happening to drive the narrative forward. To me, The Grapes Of The Wrath came across as a character-driven film but when the film is filled with uninteresting and poorly developed characters it became very hard for me to remain interested or give a damn about anything that happens to them on their journey to California.
The second half of the film is slightly better (in the sense that it has a bit more urgency about it). Although the better pacing made the second half more tolerable than the first half I still felt that the whole film had a superficial feel to it - we get to see glimpses of the suffering and pain that has been bestowed upon the family, but it's never really examined in much depth and this resulted in a film that just never seemed to take advantage of all of its potential.
The cast are all OK and whilst Fonda wasn't particularly brilliant here I appreciated that he tried to give the film some emotional weight (which again probably would have worked better if both the narrative and character dynamics had been stronger and more interesting).
So yes I didn't like this film but will say that this was more down to the slow-paced first half, poor characterisation and the missed potential in fleshing the story out and making it more interesting.