If you're going to make a film that's strictly "talking heads," you'd better make sure your characters are interesting enough to listen to. THE BIG CHILL is a perfect example of doing "talking heads" superbly. At the end of that movie, you know each character as well as you do your best friends.
Galt Niederhoffer's film takes an indie approach to the "talking heads" genre. She introduces us to her characters and makes us see they're all screwed up. And by examining them, maybe we come to realize that we're screwed up as well. Emotionally lost, living a lie, finding fault with others as a way to avoid your own deficiencies, being a dreamer even after reality has crushed those dreams.
Her characters aren't neat, they're messy. Their problems aren't resolved at the end of the movie, they're intensified. Answers aren't provided, only more questions.
Now, does any of this scream out big box office? A movie like this is unfortunately going to have an extremely limited audience. To even have a chance at being a hit, the characters would have to be much more likeable. We'd also need a lot more "visual" humor, an improbable race-to-the-finish, more sexual situations and a couple of bodily fluid jokes.
Having Josh Duhamel not knowing which way to part his hair as a way of symbolically showing us how lost he is makes today's mass audience work too hard. They'll simply avoid this and instead go see the latest sequel playing in the next theater.
I liked the movie. However, this is the type of film that hits big in Sundance but fails everywhere else.
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