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Serious Moonlight (2009):Review By harveycritic
"A dull script and a claustrophobic setting sinks this stagy romantic melodrama-comedy." - harveycritic
SERIOUS MOONLIGHT
Magnolia Pictures
Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
Directed by: Cheryl Hines
Written By: Adrienne Shelly
Cast: Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell, Justin Long
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 11/17/09
Opens: December 4, 2009
If your long-term spouse casts an eye on others, particularly younger potentials, that’s not unusual. That syndrome was codified into hilarious celluloid, Billy Wilder’s 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch.” The question now is what to do if your husband has been flirting with another and you suspect that he plans to leave you forever (the passion just died) and go with his mistress to Paris on a romantic pre-honeymoon. Louise (Meg Ryan) is faced with that situation, if you can believe that anyone would want to Ms Ryan (strangely enough, it happened in real life). She hits on an idea to get her husband, Ian (Timothy Hutton), back despite his growing relationship with much younger Sara (Kristen Bell), whose blank good looks belie her alleged smarts.
If you’re thinking of what to do to bring back your lover and you have not yet seen Cheryl Hines’s “Serious Moonlight,” written by the late Adrienne Shelly, consider Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” a terrific thriller that finds two psychotic youths in tennis outfits working their way into the home of a wealthy couple, tying them up and planning to kill them—though more out of envy than for money. In a broadly similar vein, when Ian announces his plan to leave Louise for good, she knocks him out, binds him with duct tape, and threatens to leave him in that condition until he regains his senses and declares his love for her.
This is a pretty wacko idea that would appear to have no chance of working, in fact one that could convince Ian that his former s.o. belongs in the loony bin, but leave it to the movies to find a way, a situation that involves the incursion into the household of a burglar in the guise of a gardener (Justin Long).
Meg Ryan is the one to watch in this combination crime/romance/horror tale that provides a stage for her enormous thespian talents. The key word is “stage.” A claustrophobic adventure that takes place almost exclusively in the couple’s bathroom, with the man attached to the toilet, “Serious Moonlight” would have a better platform on one of New York’s office-Broadway stages. Timothy Hutton, whose role calls for him to scream his lungs out at times, lacks the optimum ambience to test his own acting chops. Hutton is almost completely upstaged by Ryan, while the burglar, played by the now ubiquitous, 31-year-old Justin Long (“Youth in Revolt,” “Funny People,” “He’s Just Not that Into You,” “Drag Me to Hell”), has scant opportunity to steal the show.
Aside from the claustrophobic setting, “Serious Moonlight” has a script that cannot be favorably compared to that of writer-director Adrienne Shelly’s “Waitress,” which deals as well with an affair, that one involving a married doctor who becomes the heartthrob of a pie-baking coffee-shop server. By contrast, “Waitress” is chock-full of wit, both caustic and homespun.
Rated R. 84 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Magnolia Pictures
Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
Directed by: Cheryl Hines
Written By: Adrienne Shelly
Cast: Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell, Justin Long
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 11/17/09
Opens: December 4, 2009
If your long-term spouse casts an eye on others, particularly younger potentials, that’s not unusual. That syndrome was codified into hilarious celluloid, Billy Wilder’s 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch.” The question now is what to do if your husband has been flirting with another and you suspect that he plans to leave you forever (the passion just died) and go with his mistress to Paris on a romantic pre-honeymoon. Louise (Meg Ryan) is faced with that situation, if you can believe that anyone would want to Ms Ryan (strangely enough, it happened in real life). She hits on an idea to get her husband, Ian (Timothy Hutton), back despite his growing relationship with much younger Sara (Kristen Bell), whose blank good looks belie her alleged smarts.
If you’re thinking of what to do to bring back your lover and you have not yet seen Cheryl Hines’s “Serious Moonlight,” written by the late Adrienne Shelly, consider Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games,” a terrific thriller that finds two psychotic youths in tennis outfits working their way into the home of a wealthy couple, tying them up and planning to kill them—though more out of envy than for money. In a broadly similar vein, when Ian announces his plan to leave Louise for good, she knocks him out, binds him with duct tape, and threatens to leave him in that condition until he regains his senses and declares his love for her.
This is a pretty wacko idea that would appear to have no chance of working, in fact one that could convince Ian that his former s.o. belongs in the loony bin, but leave it to the movies to find a way, a situation that involves the incursion into the household of a burglar in the guise of a gardener (Justin Long).
Meg Ryan is the one to watch in this combination crime/romance/horror tale that provides a stage for her enormous thespian talents. The key word is “stage.” A claustrophobic adventure that takes place almost exclusively in the couple’s bathroom, with the man attached to the toilet, “Serious Moonlight” would have a better platform on one of New York’s office-Broadway stages. Timothy Hutton, whose role calls for him to scream his lungs out at times, lacks the optimum ambience to test his own acting chops. Hutton is almost completely upstaged by Ryan, while the burglar, played by the now ubiquitous, 31-year-old Justin Long (“Youth in Revolt,” “Funny People,” “He’s Just Not that Into You,” “Drag Me to Hell”), has scant opportunity to steal the show.
Aside from the claustrophobic setting, “Serious Moonlight” has a script that cannot be favorably compared to that of writer-director Adrienne Shelly’s “Waitress,” which deals as well with an affair, that one involving a married doctor who becomes the heartthrob of a pie-baking coffee-shop server. By contrast, “Waitress” is chock-full of wit, both caustic and homespun.
Rated R. 84 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
