Dumplin' Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but since it was starring Jennifer Anniston and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, during the first minutes, I thought it would be pretty lame.  Fortunately, I was soon won over by Danielle Macdonald. Indeed, even though she managed to look like a normal average girl (which was already quite refreshing), she was still terribly charismatic which is such a difficult balance to achieve. As a matter of fact, Jennifer Anniston, even though she was the big star in this movie and therefore the main draw, was much less convincing but I have to admit that she wasn’t helped by the fact that her character didn’t have much screen time. Concerning the rest of the movie, the concept actually had some potential but even though the end-result was eventually not bad at all, I think it was just too scattered. Indeed, they never did commit to a specific tone as it was too light for a drama and it was too dark for a comedy. There were also just too many characters orbiting around the main character. In my opinion, it seemed to be a no-brainer to focus on this mother obsessed with pageants and her daughter who definitely did not have a pageant figure but, for some weird reason, you didn’t see the mother for most of the duration and, instead, they gave us a whole bunch of a rather half-baked characters. For example, I have nothing against Odeya Rush but she is pretty much a cheaper version of Mila Kunis and there was really nothing interesting about her character. Eventually, it seemed that the makers had a solid basis but instead of digging deeper into this material, they pretty much chickened out and diluted the whole thing with some random uninteresting elements resulting in something maybe easier to swallow but also much more forgettable. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I have to admit that it was a decent watch and it is actually worth a look, especially if you like the genre.