So I finally got around to seeing all but the 1st 5-10 minutes of this movie. Like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, it ended up staying at the Uptown Theater for many weeks. Based on that, I probably had higher expectations for it than when I originally saw it was coming.
I 1st saw some stuff about it during the Sundance Film Festival coverage. The trailers looked good, and it had a cast I like with Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet among others. The actress who plays the grandmother I recall liking in some interview she did at Sundance.
And the At-the-Movies and I think a few other sources gave it an endorsement.
Well, I was frankly underwhelmed. The acting was good. Keener pretty much couldn't miss with me with her work especially in the last 10 years. Where the Wild Things Are, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Synechdoche, NY and Being John Malkovich. And I do feel she was good in this movie. So was Platt and Rebecca Hall. But the story just didn't really go all that far.
I suppose you could call it a movie about a bunch of people who go through their lives, feeling guilty about things they do, like selling furniture for more than it's worth, infidelity, or looking forward to a neighbor dying for the chance to expand the size of your apartment. But they don't really learn a ton from them. Or even at the end when they do sort of, it's so subtle and downplayed, you don't really care too much that they do.
I also thought their would be more humor in this movie. There was a bit here and there, namely from the grandmother, played by Ann Morgan Guilbert. Even Lois Smith who recently has been quite good on True Blood, was worth seeing, but maybe not as involved in the story as much as I might have liked.
I would add this to a movie like The Joneses and TiMER in 2010 movies that looked potentially good on cast and previews, but overall didn't offer nearly as much promise as they seemed to.
54/100