Finding the right words to describe my experience with this movie is difficult. It isn't a bad movie, but it suffers from, for want of a better phrase, almost an unwitting weightlessness. It's an odd thing to say considering the topic of the movie, but it genuinely felt, not so much monotone as playing against the line of atonal.
Ed Helms did a fantastic job, and plays the only character that I felt had any depth and humanity. I would love to say that this was the point, that the movie intended to highlight the sociopathic dissection and handling of this scandal, but it misses the mark of giving the story that kind of weight. There isn't enough of an exploration of the polarity between Helms and everyone else, just a series of one off exhibitions of it, each of which then naturally falls flat. No disrespect to Jim Gaffigan, but his character was more or less irrelevant. He did absolutely nothing the entire time, had minimal dialogue, and went along with whatever was happening with as little a sense of existence as possible while still being one of the most seen characters in the film.
I wouldn't recommend investing in seeing this movie, as much as I hate to say something like that. I saw it in theaters with a movie pass ticket, going in with the mindset "eh, why not?", and that seems about the best way to experience it. The actors all did a great job, and the script seemed perfectly fine, but the direction did not give enough definition or weight to the story.
Ed Helms did a fantastic job, and plays the only character that I felt had any depth and humanity. I would love to say that this was the point, that the movie intended to highlight the sociopathic dissection and handling of this scandal, but it misses the mark of giving the story that kind of weight. There isn't enough of an exploration of the polarity between Helms and everyone else, just a series of one off exhibitions of it, each of which then naturally falls flat. No disrespect to Jim Gaffigan, but his character was more or less irrelevant. He did absolutely nothing the entire time, had minimal dialogue, and went along with whatever was happening with as little a sense of existence as possible while still being one of the most seen characters in the film.
I wouldn't recommend investing in seeing this movie, as much as I hate to say something like that. I saw it in theaters with a movie pass ticket, going in with the mindset "eh, why not?", and that seems about the best way to experience it. The actors all did a great job, and the script seemed perfectly fine, but the direction did not give enough definition or weight to the story.