The critical hosannas being hurled at this film are completely mystifying to me. I have not seen such a disingenuous conglomeration of bad ideas thrown together like ingredients for a hack melodrama get this much critical praise, since, I don't know, since A Beautiful Mind or Crash.
Maybe it's because I like all the actors so much. It was disappointing to see people with such distinctive screen presences as Samuel L Jackson, Naomi Watts and Shareeka Epps get used in a story that wouldn't have passed muster as a cheap Lifetime Channel movie.
Watching Annette Bening treating Jimmy Smits rudely or having Naomi Watts introduce Sam Jackson to her nosy neighbor as her father were scenes that should have sparkled, but here they were flat as yesterday's ginger ale.
Nothing rang true for me in this story from the desperation of the young black couple to adopt a baby, any baby, to the aggressive career girl lawyer to Annette Bening's Latina maid; this doesn't mean there are not people in these predicaments in real life, because there are. I just didn't believe them here.
A good example was Shareeka Epps, she was so great in Half-Nelson as the smart girl who saw through her drug addicted teachers faults to his positive qualities, but here as an obnoxious teen giving the third degree to hopeful parents who want to adopt a baby she is thinking of giving up, I mean this is a dumb idea for a character. It's a self-conscious and false attempt to add a layer to what is essentially a bland stock character, it's right out of screen writing 101 and just as predictable.
But it was the way all the characters spoke with the same type of ironic-hip diction of a bad cable TV series that was truly annoying. With my eyes closed, I could not tell who was talking to whom, they all had the same vocabulary whether they were a Catholic nun or a high priced lawyer. How realistic is that? It isn't, except in Bad TV Land!
I swear, this glacially paced movie put me into a mouth-breathing coma. A double shot of Starbucks espresso was not enough to pull me out of my torpor after I sleepwalked out of the theater into the warm night air. Seriously, I needed a defibrillator to zap me back to the living world when this film was over.
But what really ticked me off was that this film did not have the decency to just be bad and misguided, but it had to pretend to be about "SOMETHING" in capital letters, when it is really nothing more than an ordinary dull soap opera dressed up as a motion picture.
I kept thinking to myself, "Douglas Sirk would have known what to do with this script." What a shame he's no longer with us. Gosh this film was a waste of time.
Maybe it's because I like all the actors so much. It was disappointing to see people with such distinctive screen presences as Samuel L Jackson, Naomi Watts and Shareeka Epps get used in a story that wouldn't have passed muster as a cheap Lifetime Channel movie.
Watching Annette Bening treating Jimmy Smits rudely or having Naomi Watts introduce Sam Jackson to her nosy neighbor as her father were scenes that should have sparkled, but here they were flat as yesterday's ginger ale.
Nothing rang true for me in this story from the desperation of the young black couple to adopt a baby, any baby, to the aggressive career girl lawyer to Annette Bening's Latina maid; this doesn't mean there are not people in these predicaments in real life, because there are. I just didn't believe them here.
A good example was Shareeka Epps, she was so great in Half-Nelson as the smart girl who saw through her drug addicted teachers faults to his positive qualities, but here as an obnoxious teen giving the third degree to hopeful parents who want to adopt a baby she is thinking of giving up, I mean this is a dumb idea for a character. It's a self-conscious and false attempt to add a layer to what is essentially a bland stock character, it's right out of screen writing 101 and just as predictable.
But it was the way all the characters spoke with the same type of ironic-hip diction of a bad cable TV series that was truly annoying. With my eyes closed, I could not tell who was talking to whom, they all had the same vocabulary whether they were a Catholic nun or a high priced lawyer. How realistic is that? It isn't, except in Bad TV Land!
I swear, this glacially paced movie put me into a mouth-breathing coma. A double shot of Starbucks espresso was not enough to pull me out of my torpor after I sleepwalked out of the theater into the warm night air. Seriously, I needed a defibrillator to zap me back to the living world when this film was over.
But what really ticked me off was that this film did not have the decency to just be bad and misguided, but it had to pretend to be about "SOMETHING" in capital letters, when it is really nothing more than an ordinary dull soap opera dressed up as a motion picture.
I kept thinking to myself, "Douglas Sirk would have known what to do with this script." What a shame he's no longer with us. Gosh this film was a waste of time.