It’s Brad Pitt! It’s Angelina Jolie! It’s... f*cking boring! Yes, that’s right: Brad Pitt, one of the most versatile and coolest actors of the last two decades and Angelina Jolie, who... is I guess just famous for being Angelina Jolie, team up for the first time since Mr & Mrs Smith for this naval-gazing pretentious piece of sh*t also known as By The Sea.
Set in the 1970’s, we find Brad Pitt playing a struggling writer who travels with his wife, Angelina Jolie, to a sleepy sea-side town in France where he hopes to find inspiration. However one of the biggest issues for Pitt is that whilst bereft of inspiration, he is also struggling to keep his marriage together as he and Jolie stare silently at one another for the majority of the 2 hour and 12 minute run-time.
Written and directed by Jolie, it seems that she herself struggles with Brad Pitt’s characters problem of trying to write something good or worthwhile. The dialogue is some of the most shocking I’ve heard in a long time and if dialogue is not your thing then you’re in luck because we have lots of scenes where the characters brush their teeth, sit on a bed and do nothing, stare at the beach and say nothing, or just stare out a window and look at the ocean.
The film itself is trying to capture the look and feel of the New Wave French Cinema from the 60’s and with it’s muted colours and beautiful backdrops that’s almost enough. Except it’s not. The film lives almost exclusively in a single hotel room, with the exception of the occasional moment on the beach or at the bar, and you know what, many films have managed to pull off a single location narrative before very well, this film does not.
Now look, if you are going to have two of the biggest actors in the world sit in a hotel room for over two hours then you need to have a compelling reason for the audience to sit there in the cinema and watch this. And this is one of the key things this film has completely forgotten to do. I saw two separate people get up and walk out of the screening I was in within the first 40 minutes of the film, and there were only four people in the cinema! You know your film is poorly planned if you can’t engage with over half your audience in the first 40 minutes, so in the future, Jolie should seriously consider getting someone else to write her scripts.
Overly long with no pay off, this return of the Hollywood power couple will only interest the most dedicated voyeurs who get off on watching Brad Pitt brush his teeth and Angelina Jolie sit in a bath for two hours. I know people joke that they would gladly watch Angelina Jolie in the bath or Brad Pitt brush his teeth for two hours, but the reality is really, really f*cking boring.
By The Sea gets no stars (just a really long list of all the venereal diseases I would rather have than watch this movie again)
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