Sticky, saccharine dreck

Rating: 2/10 (28 December 2013)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hated this one. The DVD was loaned to me by someone who watches all types of movies from the silent era to present day and whose opinion I respect. I had heard good things about it from others as well and yet I procrastinated about watching it for three months. It was as if some little voice was saying "don't do it don't do it" I wish I had kept listening to that little voice. The night before I was to see the DVD's owner again and did not want to lie about having watched it, I put it on. The good news is that I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen that night I couldn't bear to sit there and engage with it after the first few minutes, but I did allow it to run its course while I busied myself with useful pursuits. If I had randomly selected this film on my own, I would not have finished it.
Where do I start? Well, for one thing, it's predictable. I am one of those people who can NEVER see what's coming in a plot, and for me to call this whole thing within the first 7 minutes or so is pretty damning. "Oh, lemme guess, the old couple is the young couple and she's got dementia and he reads her their own story". Yep. And towards the end, guess what I did? I called it again. "Oh, lemme guess, they both die together." Yep, right again.
Maybe part of the reason I was so deeply offended is that I have married friends who are going through the dementia nightmare right now, and it's not like this at all. Gena Rowlands without a hair out of place, fully made up? C'mon. Flashing in and out of lucidity like she was on a light switch? Bull. It ain't like that in real life, folks, and to have it portrayed so cutesie-wootsie on screen is a poke in the eye to people who are really dealing with this illness. The only 'real' thing I saw was when Rowlands' character flipped out on James Garner; his reaction was the truest, most honest thing on the screen during the entire two hours.
The young actors were both terrible. I've never seen either of them in anything else and I hope I never do. The script was vapid, simplistic, and contrived. It seems hell-bent on trying to FORCE viewers to feel, rather than ALLOWING them to feel. I have a soft spot for good old James Garner and I consider him the one and only light in this entire mess. Oh and I liked all the swans. One star is for Garner and the other is for the swans.