Eden Court

February 2008, Cinequest

Hangover is finally abating, so let’s get the reviews going:

Movie: Eden Court
Goodness. Why start off the festival in this way, making me go back on my word of loving all the movies when this movie really was pretty bad??? I hope this is not a sign of things to come with this year’s festival, because it certainly did not get the festival off on the right foot. Usually the opening and closing movies are the very best films of the festival, and most of them make it to the general big screen. This movie, though the writer/director seemed like a really nice guy… it is not going to make it to a theater near you, no way no how. The funniest thing about the movie was that it actually was set in Nebraska, so just like my earlier post, I sat and started thinking that maybe this movie really would be better set in New York with explosions and Angelina Jolie. Certainly couldn’t have hurt it.

I mean, the problems with this movie were countless. If you have a comedy and want to stick in a drunken best friend, you can’t make her a drunken, slutty loser friend who is also a bad mother. There’s not much comedy in that. And I don’t know if Kimberley Williams-Paisley was acting the part of the wife in the way the writer had envisioned, but if so, dude needs to go interact with more women. She constantly slipped back and forth between ditzy and intelligent, loving and hateful, irresponsible and yet the only responsible member of the family. The whole movie was all over the place, and like the character of the wife, the storyline slipped too many times between comedy and tragedy, heartwarming and disgusting.

Review: Thumbs Down.

[Edited on February 24, 2013:  The imdb for this film now has it with a 2012 date… did this disaster actually get RELEASED??  I hope a lot of work went into the film in the years between 2008 and 2012…  Unbelievable…]