I would happily enjoy watching George Clooney do just about anything, so I won’t say I didn’t enjoy this film. I loved its early style and clipping pace, the montages of airport life, the two characters having lively conversations about hire cars and air miles. And the corporate scenes were good. Then it just slides away into Hollywood blancmange.
- Treats us like idiots. For example, the older sister says “this is your one chance to make it up to her” (the younger sister). Yes! We see that! It’s bleeding obvious. You don’t have to spell it out.
- Horrible conservative message drummed home ie happily married family life as pretty close to the meaning and goal of life. The Clooney character makes the point, early on, that not everyone wants to do the marriage thing. There are different paths in life. He says everyone dies alone, so don’t be with someone just because you don’t want to die alone. But the film offers Stalinism: marriage good, unmarried ba-a-ad. And then piles it on thick at the end with a voice-over actually telling us the moral of the story.
Thank God for the antidote, the Coen Brothers and Tim Burton.