Full Frontal
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Movie Reviews of Full Frontal
Movie Review: Excruciating, but not absolutely worthless ;-)
Summary: 2 Stars
There is a style, or class, or school of comedy characterized by something bad, or lame being repeated over and over until it becomes funny. There is something like this going on here with "Full Frontal". I saw this picture in a theater with six other people, and three of them walked out after twenty minutes. Too bad, really, since the chuckles only started to occur after the proceedings had worn you absolutely down, and twenty minutes into the picture you were only JUST starting to get exasperated. Could be that this film works better on the small screen, which I found to be the case with Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut", another excruciating experience. Warning! By no means see this movie with another recent Soderbergh picture "Solaris", or you may subsequently need therapy.Movie Review: Experimental does not always mean good
Summary: 1 Stars
It saddens me to say so but "Full Frontal" is painfully boring, pointless, disjointed, and underdeveloped. I am a big fan of indie experimental original movies but this one gives the term bad meaning. As hard as they tried, the talented performers ((David Hyde Pierce, Catherine Keener, Mary McCormack, Julia Roberts, Blair Underwood) could not make their lifeless characters interesting enough for me to care. I love Catherine Keener in every movie I've seen her but she's played the same role in better films. She is much more interesting in Neil LaBute's "Your Friends & Neighbors" (1998) which reminds in some ways Full Frontal. Both, Neil LaBute's and Soderbergh's films picture selfish and often unpleasant and despicable people who are not happy with themselves and can't make happy those close to them. Another Keener's film that came to my mind, is Living in Oblivion (1995), a 91 minutes long low-budget independent movie about trials and tribulations of making a low budget independent movie. Tom DiCillo's smart, funny, playful, and highly enjoyable Living in Oblivion has surreal, strangely poetic and amusing quality to it. Unlike, Soderbergh's empty exercise in self-indulgence, wonderful cast of Living in Oblivion has something interesting to play and the characters created by Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Chad Palomino, Dermot Mulroney and Peter Dinklage (in a very funny cameo) are alive and three-dimensional. I am a fan of Soderbergh's work since I saw his fascinating debut, the Palme d'Or winner "Sex, Lies, and Videotape". I read that "Full Frontal" is in a way a sequel to Soderbergh's first feature. If that's true, it only proves that sequels almost never measure up to originals.
Movie Review: Unremarkable and confusing
Summary: 1 Stars
Okay, if you like this movie, don't read this review and remember it is my opinion.Some really high powered actors are found in this movie. It is a movie within a movie. You see an interview taking place that is really part of the movie and then you see the character's real lives.
The line from movie to "reality" gets blurred. However the use of video quality scenes versus the kind generally used in Hollywood movies helps provide the definition of which is which.
There are several characters. Focal to this movie in primarily name only is Gus. All the players are planning (except for one) to go to a birthday party in his honor in the near future.
A young black actor, who in the movie plays second fiddle to a well known actor.
An actress who plays a reporter.
A VP of Human resources that is nearly a basket case.
The sister of the VP of Human resources, who is also massage therapist, who has a unique connection to the birthday boy. She also plans on meeting a blind date from the internet soon.
A director of the movie, who's life is falling apart. It is pretty obvious why, with his victim mentality.
The director's partner, who does off Hollywood plays as well as producing this movie and hopes to meet a blind date on the internet.
All these characters are played by well-known actors in this self-obsessed movie. The only point is our moods and actions are so dependent on our sense of safety.
I can't say I found this movie entertaining, but only mildly diverting and for the most part pointless. Maybe that is the point.
Movie Review: Watching paint dry
Summary: 1 Stars
If this movie has any redeeming value it's in curing me of any desire to see another Hollywood expose again. I should have remembered it from my days as a Theatre major but for the record - actors are boring, directors are boring, most movie people sit around doing nothing in order to get ten minutes of footage put together. Even if these people aren't boring, they aren't nearly as interesting as their characters on screen.And Soderbergh really captures the dullness of Hollywood living as these characters go about their lives, reading their scenes, making the adjustments to their personal lives that personal trainers and therapy allows for. There are about 5 different storylines going through this movie but they have one thing in common - they are all forgettable. In fact I remember snippets like feeding the dog marijuana brownies or the divorce letter that never gets sent. I find myself realizing why David Duchovny wasn't a major star before <b>The X-Files</b>. He might be hilarious on the talk shows, but his understated droll delivery only works if he's talking about alien conspiracies. If he's talking about anything else you just want to nod off and take a nap.
Buy this movie only if you want to torture your friends. Ten minutes into this thing I was feeling the slow weight of ennui creep over me. I couldn't move. I didn't want anything but a nap. If there are people that watched this thing all at once they are better folks than me. This movie makes Merchant Ivory movies look like action movies in comparison.
Movie Review: Don't buy this DVD--don't even spend $3 to rent it
Summary: 1 Stars
The only reason this movie gets one star is because there's not an option to choose zero. This is, unbelievably to me, given Mr. Soderbergh's other credits, one of the WORST movies I've ever seen. The "documentary" style filming is grainy and extremely distracting, and even more so because it's such an over-used technique. I'm an avid independent film viewer and like the unusual and the avant-garde, but this film is a poseur which fails in every way.If you come to the story without knowing it's supposed to be imbued with skewering cleverness and satire, it's confusing, unengaging and boring, and, come to think of it, now that I know it's supposed to have those elements, it's STILL confusing, boring and unengaging. The character development is so poor that you don't care about anybody nor understand what's motivating them. David Hyde Pierce is a horrible choice for the main character--he has no depth or emotional range which, unfortunately, keeps us half wondering if Kelsey Grammer's going to come through the door at any minute. Catherine Keener has the kind of charisma that transcends shoddy screenwriting, but how her character behaves makes the least sense of all.
I think the only reason to rent this movie would be if you want to get a few second "full frontal" view of David Duchovny, albeit a grainy one shot from a distance so you really can't see anything, or if you're the VP of HR and you need to show your managers how NOT to conduct an HR interview.