An average movie

Even though this movie was really poorly received, since it was directed by Ron Howard and since it was available on Netflix, I was still eager to check it out. Well, maybe because I had some rather low expectations but, to be honest, I didn’t think it was so bad at after all. At least, the material definitely had some potential but I have to admit that this movie still never really worked though. The first issue was that Ron Howard was obviously not the right guy to handle such a dark material. I mean, this story was clearly about a highly dysfunctional family but, instead of diving into the complex mechanisms involved in this group of people, Howard always remained skin-deep and instead constantly hammered the fact that the narrator actually really loved his family. In the same way, the general tone, especially the soundtrack, was just too light for this material. The directing was not the only problem though. Indeed, this movie was another example that the back-and-forth in time remains such a useless and annoying gimmick. Finally, I haven’t read the book it was adapted from but the fact that it was a best-seller doesn’t necessarily mean that it was actually really great. I mean, you could assume that the main drive of this story was the deconstruction of the American Dream  showing in the process that some big chunks of the American population will never come close to this ideal. Yet, the fact that this tale was actually told by a guy who came from nothing and managed to study at Yale and eventually became a venture capitalist  and a successful author, basically reaching the American Dream, in my opinion, clearly undermined the whole message. Finally, the movie spent too time much on the narrator who remains seriously clueless about what was going around him, even as a grown-up, when they should have focused more on Mamaw and Bev. At least, even though their performances reeked of Oscar-bait, I still think that Amy Adams and Glenn Close were both really good in this flick. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I think it was a decent watch though but there is no doubt that it was another rather misguided directing effort from Ron Howard.