Tag: Amanda Seyfried

‘Love the Coopers’ (2015) Review

Love the Coopers Synopsis: The intertwined stories of four generations of Coopers unfold right before the annual family reunion on Christmas Eve. Can they survive the most beautiful time of the year?

Charlotte and Sam have decided to divorce after forty years of marriage, but they agree to have one last family Christmas before telling their grown children of their separation. Their children, Hank (Ed Helms) and Eleanor (Olivia Wilde), have their own issues. Hank is going through a divorce, complete with a moody teenager and a younger son who just wants everyone to be happy again.

Eleanor has a strained relationship with her mother and decides to ask a soon-to-be-deployed soldier to Christmas dinner in the guise of being her boyfriend. Charlotte’s sister Emma has a shoplifting problem and their father Buddy (Alan Arkin) invites a waitress (Amanda Seyfried) from a nearby diner to dinner.

Love the Coopers is very reminiscent of The Family Stone and countless other holiday family dramedies that came before it. There are some hits and plenty of misses, but I found Love the Coopers extremely enjoyable. I would never have imagined Diane Keaton and John Goodman married with children, but they have such lovely chemistry that made it easy to believe they had been together for forty years. I also really enjoyed the scenes between Wilde and Jake Lacy, who played Joe, the soldier at the airport. They seemed to be complete opposites, personality-wise, but I thought they had good chemistry too, and I could have watched an entire rom-com centered around those two characters.

Anthony Mackie shows up as a withdrawn cop tasked with taking Emma (Marisa Tomei) to the station after she’s caught stealing at the mall, and she decides to play head shrink on the car ride. Alex Borstein plays Angie, Hank’s ex-wife, who, for some reason, is invited to Christmas dinner even though she and Hank cannot stay in the same room for more than a few minutes without fighting. Buddy and Ruby (Seyfried) have a touching relationship somewhat intertwined with Hank and Hank, and Angie’s teenage son is going through growing pains of his own with a crush who works at the mall.

Whew. Yes, a lot is going on, but Love the Coopers never felt muddled to me. Watching Charlotte and Sam’s marriage disintegrate over a trip not taken is heartbreaking, but I got the impression that their arguments gave their marriage hope of survival. They were willing to fight to reach each other and find mutual understanding. Diane Keaton is amazing, as usual, as was John Goodman. They’re the glue that holds the entire family and movie together, and they do it wonderfully.

This movie is not as dramatic as some in the same genre, but it’s absolutely worth a watch. It has many laughs, attributed to June Squibb, who plays Sam’s eccentric aunt, and an earnest ending that leaves you feeling quite warm and full of the Christmas spirit.

Watched: 12/23/2020
Notable Song: To Love Somebody by Nina Simone

Rating:

12/24/2020
‘The Clapper’ (2017) Review

Eddie Krumble (Ed Helms) lives in Hollywood with his best friend Chris, working as a professional clapper in infomercials. It’s not exactly a glamorous life, and Eddie begins to find happiness when a romance blossoms between him and a gas station attendant named Judy (Amanda Seyfried). But when a late-night talk show host zeroes in on Eddie’s many infomercial “disguises,” everyone sets out to discover who Eddie really is, jeopardizing his job and new relationship.

I had not heard of The Clapper before scrolling on Netflix for something to watch and deciding to try it. I like Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried, and Tracy Morgan. But after watching the movie, I understood why I hadn’t heard of it. Frankly put, it is not a good movie. I think it had an interesting enough premise, but director Dito Montiel (who also wrote the novel the film is based upon) does absolutely nothing with it. Instead, it feels like the characters sort of flail about until Eddie needs help finding Judy, and even then, it really fails to maintain any interest in the outcome.

Eddie is an unlikeable lead, or perhaps that’s just Helms’s portrayal of him. He and Seyfried had zero chemistry, although admittedly, Seyfried was pretty sweet as the unsuspecting Judy. Eddie simply felt like a man with genuine homicidal tendencies.

As I was watching, all I could think was that this movie was essentially what would have happened if Andy Bernard (Helms’s character in The Office) had moved to Hollywood to be a professional infomercial audience member… although Andy would have loved the attention. In contrast, Eddie seemed to lose his cool whenever anyone recognized him.

The romance falls flat, and even though this is a comedy, it’s simply not funny. Not even Tracy Morgan, as Chris, could get a laugh out of me. Usually, with these little-known rom-coms, I can find something I enjoy, and, to be fair, The Clapper is no different… it has an excellent soundtrack, but thankfully you don’t need to watch it to listen to the music. This is a definite pass.

Watched: 04/16/2020
Notable Song: Outdoors by Rad Planet

Rating:

04/21/2020
‘Letters to Juliet’ (2010) Review

Letters to Juliet Synopsis: Sophie dreams of becoming a writer and travels to Verona, Italy where she meets the “Secretaries of Juliet”.

Sophie Hall (Amanda Seyfried) is a fact-checker for a local paper who aspires to be a full-time writer. Her fiance Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), is a chef weeks away from opening his own restaurant. The two decide to take a pre-wedding honeymoon to Verona, because they won’t have the time once Victor’s restaurant opens.

While in Verona, Sophie wants to sightsee and explore the city, but Victor is being wined and dined by various food and wine vendors. While Victor is off at a wine auction, Sophie explores Verona alone. She comes across a small courtyard of women who are all writing letters to Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet). The letters are placed on the wall below Juliet’s balcony. At the end of the day, a group of women who call themselves the Secretaries of Juliet take the letters and respond to the despondent and heartbroken women.

Intrigued, Sophie finds a fifty-year-old letter lost inside a loose stone in the wall and feels compelled to write back to the letter’s author. Her name is Claire, and she had written to Juliet after leaving Lorenzo, the man she had wanted to marry, knowing her parents would never approve.

Sophie’s letter reaches Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), who travels to Verona with her prickly grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan), to finally track down Lorenzo and apologize for leaving him so long ago. Given that Victor is much more interested in the food and wine of the area, Sophie decides to accompany Claire and Charlie in their search, realizing there could be an interesting story for her to write.

First things first. The cinematography in Letters to Juliet is exquisite. There are so many soft, beautiful shots of the Italian countryside that it is easy to get swept up in the romanticism of the setting. Even when the story was letting me down, I could still appreciate how gorgeous the movie was, which helped keep it from becoming a complete disappointment.

There is nothing special about the characters. They’re all basic cookie cutouts of characters we’ve seen before. Vanessa Redgrave is a cinematic icon who should have probably been given more to do, but I enjoyed watching her emotional take as Claire, a woman seeking the love of her life fifty years after leaving him behind. I even enjoyed Seyfried and Egan as two young people who initially don’t get along and spend their time bickering over Claire’s situation before finding some common ground (and attraction).

Bernal is a fantastic actor, but boy, was his talent wasted in this movie. His character is a bit of a fast-talking doofus, obsessed with his career while blatantly ignoring Sophie’s interests and desires. He’s the one-dimensional throwaway fiance designed to make us sympathize with poor Sophie and root for her to find the man who sparks the right passion. This role could have gone to a lesser actor, and it would have made no difference.

To be fair, I enjoyed certain aspects of Letters to Juliet. I loved the introductions of the Secretaries of Juliet (which actually exists), and I enjoyed Claire’s interactions with all of the wrong Lorenzos. The moment she finds the Lorenzo she left so many years ago (played by Redgrave’s real-life husband, Franco Nero), it’s such a romantic moment that I could put aside all of the issues I had with the movie… for a few moments anyway.

My biggest disappointment stemmed from how different the movie’s end felt compared to the rest. Maybe Sophie and Charlie had better chemistry when bickering because their confession of love felt so out of place compared to how their interactions had been up to that moment. It was like someone else took the script to write the last scene. The dialogue was generic, the setup was eye-roll-inducing, and neither character acted like the characters I had been watching for the previous hour and a half.

Overall I found Letters to Juliet to be a bit bland. I might have enjoyed it more had the romance ended differently, perhaps in a way that didn’t remind me so much of the Hallmark Channel. But Redgrave was fantastic, and if you want to escape from this world for a while, it won’t hurt to put on Letters to Juliet and get lost in the gorgeous Italian scenery.

Watched: 03/31/2020
Notable Song: Love Story by Taylor Swift

Rating:

04/04/2020
‘The Big Wedding’ (2013) Review

Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton (whom I could watch in just about anything) play Don and Ellie, a divorced couple who are forced to pretend they’re still married when their adopted son Alejandro’s ultra-conservative, Catholic (Ben Barnes – who seems to have been sprayed with self-tanner to appear Hispanic) biological mother and sister arrive to attend his wedding to Missy (Amanda Seyfried).

The problem is that Don has lived with Ellie’s (ex) best friend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon), for the past eight years. The movie also touches upon Alejandro’s adopted siblings, Topher Grace and Katherine Heigl.

Grace plays Jared, a 29-year-old doctor and a virgin who is suddenly eager to lose it to Al’s biological sister Nuria. Heigl is Lyla, a woman suffering from infertility and separation from her husband. She also holds some immense hostility toward Don for cheating on her mother with Bebe.

The Big Wedding feels too big. There are too many characters, too many storylines, and not enough movie. We don’t get to know the characters all that well before the wedding day arrives.

The storylines seem far-fetched, the conflicts are quickly brushed off as if nothing happened (a quick apology from Lyla’s estranged husband is enough to call it water under the bridge?), and while there are a few laughs, there aren’t enough to save the clunky storytelling.

Oh, and Robin Williams, who is usually a bright spot in most movies he stars in, is so woefully underused. Anyone could have probably stepped into his role, and it would have been just as shrug-worthy.

The Big Wedding is disappointing, to say the least.

Watched: 08/30/2018
Notable Song: Save The Last Dance for Me by Michael Buble

Rating:

08/30/2018