All tagged Family
What I most want to get across in this review is that I felt that the story contained real truths about lives that are often diminished by society at large. Between the life or death madcap adventures and evasion of the police, there are real moments of mom angst and frustration that come across as nakedly real.
Heart is an undervalued commodity in filmmaking. Big films try to sneak it in, like they do humor and romance, but it always comes off as sloppy and insincere. In John Krasinski’s second directorial effort The Hollars, heart is the base of this small yet thoughtful indie.
Family is also a huge part of the story, because Colleen possessed a newfound sense of propriety, though that sense of superiority is undermined by her mother, a pot smoking maternal figure who still tries to understand and connect with her absent daughter.
The film tries to be funny, in a bleak, sarcastic kind of way, but it does not deliver. Much like Sonnenfeld’s other venture, Wild Wild West, the film tries to be an edgy contemporary to a familiar genre and fails miserably.
The boy who never grew up is a common trope, also explored in "Elizabethtown" and probably every indie film of the past ten years. Rose Byrne is the driving force for this film, as she balances between a soft sweetness and near internal combustion, in her performance as a woman who takes care of everyone.
