257. Bittersweet Symphony; movie review
Hotcorn
BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY
Cert TBA
80 mins
BBFC advice: TBA
Reasons to watch: If you are a fan of improvisation
Reasons to avoid: Its style means it lacks cohesion.
Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 4/10
Did you know? Probably the most effective use of improvisation in a film was Mike Leigh's Vera Drake. He won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar but the script he submitted was not used.
The final word. Jamie Adams: "Film is theatre to me, and though I love films, I love Jurassic Park and stuff like that, but you have to find your own way of working and for me writing a script and having people say those words, it doesn’t have a connection." Hotcorn
Cert TBA
80 mins
BBFC advice: TBA
Another Jamie Adams' film about a pop wannabe which is acted out without a fully defined script? That is three this year!
Bittersweet Symphony has so many echoes of Songbird and Wild Honey Pie! that it would be easy to think it is merely an extension of either or both.
Once again, Richard Elis plays a relationship-phobe but, thankfully, he is peripheral to the main story about the travails of a singer-songwriter (Suki Waterhouse).
She is working on the soundtrack for her first Hollywood film but struggling to balance her work against the need to devote time to her dying mum (Claire Cage) and a delusional ex-boyfriend (Craig Roberts).
To further complicate her life, her musical hero (Jennifer Grey) turns up at her parents' home and brings emotional issues of her own.
Hold on... I can hear you wanting me to back up a cotton-pickin' minute.
"Jennifer Grey?". Yes, that Jennifer Grey - the one from Dirty Dancing appears in an Adams improv movie.
This is hot on the heels of Cobie Smulders starring in Songbird. How does he attract such big names?
Anyway, Grey is irrecognisable as she plays a writer whose own personal life seems to be a bit of a car crash.
And on it goes - Waterhouse's character is pulled between the desperate love of her mum, the no-hope persistence of her ex and the strange allure of this older woman.
In itself, this sounds promising, but Adams' films consistently prove that actors cannot just take a premise and make up dialogue off the top of their heads.
If they could, what would be the point of screenwriters?
The evidence of Adams' films is that they resort to the type of material they might have used in acting classes, with over-exaggerated facial stretches or repeating words, seemingly for effect.
Nobody in real life behaves like this - people just have plain conversations in which questions are asked or points are made.
Anyway, leaving them to their own devices makes for incoherence and, consequently, despite a decent cast and a half-interesting premise, Bittersweet Symphony is washed away in a sea of meaningless words.
Reasons to avoid: Its style means it lacks cohesion.
Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 4/10
Did you know? Probably the most effective use of improvisation in a film was Mike Leigh's Vera Drake. He won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar but the script he submitted was not used.
The final word. Jamie Adams: "Film is theatre to me, and though I love films, I love Jurassic Park and stuff like that, but you have to find your own way of working and for me writing a script and having people say those words, it doesn’t have a connection." Hotcorn
0 Response to "257. Bittersweet Symphony; movie review"
Posting Komentar