I am a 58-year-old film buff, and this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in a theater. It is boring, stiff, dry, and very rarely funny--and when so, only mildly amusing. I heard only a handful of chuckles in the audience.
Dialogue is tortured and repetitive. A respectable script editor would have crossed out most of it with a red pencil and written "please rewrite" in the margin of every page.
The four main characters have cliche jobs that barely benefit humanity (novelist, actor, high-end interior designer, and therapist), and everyone is weak and whiney. The "conflict" is so lamely small: Julia L-D wrote a novel and she discovers that her husband doesn't like it. So what? Who cares? I guess the theme is that this segment of society (white upper-middle-class) is always overly nice and supportive of their spouses and children when they should be more honest and critical. Yawn. We've known that since the '90s. These are lame-o people with petty problems, and we don't empathize with them, care about them, or like them.
I don't think the story has a climax, and the resolution is weak and unsatisfying. There is no real emotion in this movie at all. Usually small movies at least have a heart, but this film has no heart or soul. The last scene is a nothing burger.
Even the movie's music is abysmal--like funeral music played really low. And though the setting is upscale New York in the summertime, we don't get to experience the joy of the setting. Shots are all close and tight; the movie feels claustrophobic.
The only redeeming quality is the angry couple in therapy; they were genuinely funny. One of the other therapy patients, the heavy one, was a good character too.
I find it troubling that reviews for this film are so good. One critic called it a "small masterpiece." It's as if the Oakland A's finished with a 43-119 record and sportswriters rated their season performance as a 9 out of 10. Makes ya wanna pull your hair out...
