Junebug...or not
We just watched Junebug, the film made here in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina. I put it on my Netflix queue on the recommendation of Strother and my oldest son, Phillip.
Sorry, guys, I found the film to be pointless, dull, and contrived. As a character study, I guess it was relatively well done, but just as a ripping good story without characterization falls flat on its face, a character study without a sustainable plot ends up face down in the mud as well.
The writer used a prodigal son tale to weave his characters around, but the story offers nothing new and in many parts the fact that the story is contrived to support the characterizations becomes painfully obvious. There seems to have been no good reason for the art dealer and the Carolina boy to get married other than sex and to provide the writer with an excuse to throw the cosmopolitan Yank in amongst the bucolic Southrons. The story might have worked a little better if Pfafftown, NC and its denizens weren't nearly identical to just about every other suburban locale in America. Once again, positioning the story in Pfafftown and Pinnacle seems to have been contrived simply to introduce the bizarre character of the artist whom Embeth Davitz' character comes to North Carolina to meet. And bizarre he is. He seems to be a cross between Nell from...well...Nell and Carl from Slingblade. There is an utterly bizarre tableau in the middle of the movie in which he shows his pointlessly pornographic and violent artwork to Davitz' character and gives a garbled explanation about being on a mission of some sort.
While characterizations were deep and mostly well done, I couldn't find myself sympathetic to any of them. With no story to support them, there was nothing for me to relate to, and I didn't even really feel that bad for Amy Adams' character. The entire movie simply amounted to "some stuff that happened to some regular people." I can go visit a neighbor for that, I don't need to watch a movie.
It was pretty cool seeing the local scenery in a movie and the shot taken driving up US 52 toward Pinnacle was interesting. Other than that, I probably could have missed it and not missed it...if you know what I mean.
Sorry, guys, I found the film to be pointless, dull, and contrived. As a character study, I guess it was relatively well done, but just as a ripping good story without characterization falls flat on its face, a character study without a sustainable plot ends up face down in the mud as well.
The writer used a prodigal son tale to weave his characters around, but the story offers nothing new and in many parts the fact that the story is contrived to support the characterizations becomes painfully obvious. There seems to have been no good reason for the art dealer and the Carolina boy to get married other than sex and to provide the writer with an excuse to throw the cosmopolitan Yank in amongst the bucolic Southrons. The story might have worked a little better if Pfafftown, NC and its denizens weren't nearly identical to just about every other suburban locale in America. Once again, positioning the story in Pfafftown and Pinnacle seems to have been contrived simply to introduce the bizarre character of the artist whom Embeth Davitz' character comes to North Carolina to meet. And bizarre he is. He seems to be a cross between Nell from...well...Nell and Carl from Slingblade. There is an utterly bizarre tableau in the middle of the movie in which he shows his pointlessly pornographic and violent artwork to Davitz' character and gives a garbled explanation about being on a mission of some sort.
While characterizations were deep and mostly well done, I couldn't find myself sympathetic to any of them. With no story to support them, there was nothing for me to relate to, and I didn't even really feel that bad for Amy Adams' character. The entire movie simply amounted to "some stuff that happened to some regular people." I can go visit a neighbor for that, I don't need to watch a movie.
It was pretty cool seeing the local scenery in a movie and the shot taken driving up US 52 toward Pinnacle was interesting. Other than that, I probably could have missed it and not missed it...if you know what I mean.
posted by Anonymous | 10:15 PM
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