Glucedee
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Hayden Kane
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
JohnnyLee1
Rom-com with a difference. Inter-generational, so that parents and kids are all going through throes of love at different stages. Loved how script handled all the relationships. Lot of truth in how everyone at different times felt alone, unsupported. Acting great, especially Greg Kinnear who has to hold everything together. Personally liked literary setting, though dad must have written best-sellers to live where he does!
Sadie Tisher
The only thing worse than the acting is the plot. Christmas themed movie with a mid-level star cast but with no believable characters (except maybe the dog near the beginning). Writers love to write about other writers when they have nothing else to write about. This is the story of a privileged family unhappy at Christmas. None of the characters have back story and I found everyone unlikable. I found the daughter Samantha particularly unbelievable, a college girl who sleeps around constantly and then finally agrees to date a nice boy named Lou who is a nice guy and pretty darn boring. I really liked when Samantha cried, great application of fake tears. Just a terrible movie.
Cathex
I imagine those were the words the director used to describe what kind of movie he wanted to make to his producers.I know this is a film for teenagers, but the problem is its just so annoying.The story centres on the lives of one white middle class American family and their first world problems in a rose tinted two dimensional universe. It claims to be a coming of age story, based on love, but in reality its a slightly histrionic adolescent fantasy. Which is actually a regular formula for this director, in fact I may just as well cut and paste this review onto everything else he's done and probably will do (tho I think this is where I get off). As a film for teenagers it is OK, and I can look past most of the crap. Sometimes its actually funny, but rarely. What really annoyed me however was that the film pretends, and what's worse may even actually believe, that it has some depth of meaning, and that is nothing short of delusional.Luckily though Boone manages to secure some pretty good actors so the performances are convincing (although the script is not), and his technical ability to actually film is fine, though certainly not interesting. Now, if I've taken anything from this films pseudo morals and all those charming good looking kids with their fashionable heartbreak and Hollywood smiles, besides irritation, its that you gotta end on a positive note cos life is about living and loving right? So here goes...this movie sucks!
jos25
From the first scene, I was distracted by what I perceived to be Lily Colin's contrived acting.... It strongly appeared to me that she was "ACTING," regurgitating memorized lines with fake flare.... This distracted me the whole movie! The girl is beautiful, and looks like she could be Jennifer Garner's daughter, but other than that, I just found her poorly-cast. (And judging from the other ratings, I am very alone in this opinion. But I had to speak up!) Lily's swinging between, "I'm the surly, angry teenage," to a super-smily flirty girl, to surly-angry again, to "I'm so happy, yippee, we're all together again!" was just so unbelievable to me that it clouded the whole movie. Many scenes, in fact, were unbelievable and unrealistic to me. (I mean, why would a whole family, especially one that was broken from divorce, dart out together, in one car, from the daughter's book-publishing party, just because the son couldn't find his girlfriend? If anything, just one or two of them would leave. Or they'd leave in separate cars.The whole scene was like fake drama to me.) The one person who made the movie for me (other than the wonderfully cast Greg Kinnear) was Kristen Bell's housewife character, "Tricia." Kristen was funny and believable as Tricia, and had heart. I thought Greg Kinnear performed his role 100% convincingly. But the dialogue made no sense. He tells his high school son to go out and have experiences, but then complains when the son begins partying and finds a druggie girlfriend. What else does a father expect, when he encourages a teenage son to 'get out there'? These people seemed to have average intelligence (or, vapidity combined with pretentiousness, in Lily Collins's character), and they just didn't come across as whip-smart enough, or wordsmithy enough, to be writers. Too many characters, such as the girlfriend Kate, or even Lily, seemed unrelatable or undeserving of our empathy. Even the mother, a central character, has practically no personality to the viewers, until a 5-minute scene near the end, when we learn a little about her and begin empathizing with her. I don't mean to sound harsh but someone had to write in to average down the confusingly high IMDb ratings here. I totally rely on these ratings for movie night, and I don't find myself to be picky with movies, but more and more, I am finding some of these IMDb ratings so skewed, that I will need to start chiming in for democracy's sake!! Truth is, I'd probably give this movie a 5 or 6 for its intrigue factor, and its heart at the end. It, despite all its flaws, is somewhat thought- provoking. But I have to give it a 2 or 3 just to weigh down the ridiculously high 7.3 average here on IMDb.
