I wouldn't normally give the 'dysfunctional family christmas' genre a second glance, but this one has Paul Giamatti in it. It starts out to form, which is to say frothy and inconsequential, but the assorted, stock characters turn out to have surprising depth. A 70s nostalgia angle is played a tad too hard, lacking the subtlety and historic grounding of The Ice Storm. Apart from that, and the genre itself (which ultimately does kind of drag it down), a pretty flawless production.
We go fairly often. A small number of movies should be seen large. Can't say this was one, but go we did. Probably should have gone to Napoleon for the largeness instead. But we didn't.
I'm wondering about Napoleon and the bigness. I saw Waterloo on the big screen when I was 16. It was a school trip cinema visit. 15000+ extras in battle scenes blew my teenage socks off. Not that many in Napoleon, and I read that there's a lot of AI/CGI duplication. I'd like to see it big, even if its to go "Hmmm".
The early talk of a much longer cut being on streaming has left me a bit unsure too, is it going to be bloated or is the cinema release suffering from having too much removed?
Watched it just now to wind down from 17 Boxing Day guests. Liked it. Maybe a fraction long but the time was generally well used. I get what Mr Smith means about a 70s nostalgia angle, but even that wasn't too badly done. Basically a decent intelligent script, pretty flawlessly acted by all. And entertaining.
Edit: just spotted that I echoed the flawless idea. Probably because that's what it was.