Art for Art's Sake

Rating: 5/10 (29 February 2016)

This black comedy explores devotion, jealously, honesty, compromise, deception, and true love. Bizarre and dystopian, the theme had great promise. Still, it was a movie to be endured. After about 35 minutes, I wasn't sure that I could take any more. The Lobster has that purposeful and all-pervasive awkwardness that saturates Wes Anderson films. The embellishments on this story, however, nearly ruined it. The narration and musical score were grating. In fact, the avant-garde posturing could have been much more easily and pleasantly achieved by leaving out the accompanying music and voice overs. Unfortunate casting with Colin Farrell. It's not that he did a bad job with the part, but that it would have been so much better with an unknown playing the role. Overall, this was not an enjoyable film but instead a provocative watch. I'm not sure that it will have any long-lasting implications for the way I think, and I'm really not sure that I'm glad I watched it. I'm just not sure what the deal is with these purposefully made bad movies.