An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I don’t think it was necessarily a bad story (this couple did manage to collect millions of dollars to support the homeless in the US, that’s a great achievement, even if it did vastly contradict the message of this movie which was that it’s not that important to donate money) but the approach was just so clunky and mawkish, it made the damned thing borderline unwatchable. For example, the starting point was that their marriage was almost over but was it really that important? At the end of the day, it felt as if we were supposed to feel more sorry about this really rich couple than about all this poor homeless people. Then, Djimon Hounsou was praised for his performance but, to be honest, I don’t think he was really good though. I mean, his first scene when he was going on a rampage with a baseball bat was quite powerful but, in my opinion, it was pretty obvious that he was ‘pretending’ to be pissed off, instead of actually ‘being’ pissed off. He wasn’t helped either by the fact that his character was poorly written. Indeed, a lot of people living on the streets have some severe mental issues and it would be great if we could cure them by only being kind to them (which was basically what happened in this movie) but I’m afraid helping someone with some massive psychological disease is much more complicated than that. Furthermore, for someone who was completely illiterate, the guy was able to come up with some really elaborate stories and uplifting speeches. Another bewildering thing was the fact that this couple focused so much on upgrading his homeless shelter and doing random ‘stuff’ with him but I didn’t understand why they never tried to actually getting him out of the streets. I mean, sure, it might be easier than done but why at least didn’t they try to help him to be able to read and write? Anyway, to conclude, even if the damned thing was rather harmless, it was pretty weak after all and you should probably avoid it. 

5/10