Review: This is Where I Leave You (2014)

This movie is where I got the idea from Flick Chicks latest Blogathon, which the round up post of which will be posted soon.  Here is the link if you want to check out what it's all about http://www.flick-chicks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/dysfunctional-families-cast-thon.html

When their Father dies, four adult siblings are forced to come back to the childhood home and live under the same room for a week.  Judd (Jason Bateman) has split from his wife but has failed to tell his family, Wendy (Tina Fey) has to deal with seeing the love of her life again, Phillip (Adam Driver) arrives with his new (rich) girlfriend in tow and Paul (Corey Stoll) is dealing with his and his wife Annie's (Kathryn Hahn) delays in getting pregnant. Throw in their over-sharing Mother (Jane Fonda) for good measure and watch the chaos ensue.

I wouldn't say this film is terrible but I wouldn't say its great either.  It's thoroughly predictable (and I haven't read the book) and no matter how good the cast was the dialogue could not be saved.  I did enjoy watching it though, I wasn't bored by any means and it's certainly not the casts worst work (Admission and Bad Words spring to mind!) but it just didn't have enough to keep me laughing or keep me crying.  I'm tempted to read the book now, because it must surely be better than the film (they normally are!). The cast did an alright job, but it was a bit too silly for me. Every single character had too much crazy going on, it was hard to keep up at times!

Bateman's dry humour fits perfectly with the dramedy (as i have just been informed Drama/Comedies have been shortened to these days!), but he is the same character he pretty much always is, there's not depth to his character, he is just reading the lines off the page and then off home for tea!  I didn't buy his relationship with Penny (Rose Byrne) for one minute, they just didn't fit right for me. I'm a huge Jason Bateman fan but he didn't wow me in this. 

The rest of the cast seem to lack chemistry with each other or aren't a real character at all, Wendy's husband seems to have no connection with anyone in the family including Wendy and fortunately leaves pretty rapidly (obviously leaving Wendy open to reignite an old flame).  As much as I love Conne Britton (huge Nashville fan), she appeared to only be written in to showcase how screwed up Phillip is, which could have been done without her.  A lot of wasted talent here.

I read on IMDB that originally, Adam Shankman was going to direct this, and when he was, the main cast was Zac Efron, Malin Akerman, Leslie Mann, Jason Sudeikis and Goldie Hawn, alongside Jason Bateman. This would have been far better! Totally better!!

Overall, not great but not a disaster.  Happily watched it once but won't be watching it again.  If you want to watch s film about a messed up family and it's messed up issues, watch August: Osage County instead.

Dysfunctional Families - Cast-a-Thon

As we have finally posted the round-up to out previous Blogathon, we thought it would be a good time for a new one!!  Everyone undoubtedly has their own dysfunctional family and every has no question has seen a movie that includes a dysfunctional family of sorts.  This blogathon with cast the ULTIMATE dysfunctional family by picking the best of the best (or worst of the worst) from dysfunctional families in movies and creating your own.

I actually got this idea after doing the awesome Slasher Cast-a-thon hosted by the amazing Dell on Movies back in October and watching This is where I leave you, involving a family dealing with death of the patriarch in the most dysfunctional ways possible (review to follow at some point).

Anyway, as always there are rules but they are simple:

1. Build a cast for your dysfunctional family from movies ONLY.  You can have as many characters as you like but you must include the following:

• Lead Character - Generally the most normal of the family and spends a lot of time rolling eyes or telling family members off for their bad behaviour.

• Inappropriate Mother/Father/Parents - Usually involves oversharing, inappropriate comments, name calling, swearing, drinking and/or drug use etc etc.

• Stroppy Teenager/Manchild - Either the immature teenager who hates his family or the fully grown manchild who struggles to accept that he is an adult and should behave like one.

• Uncomfortable Stranger - Usually a new girlfriend/boyfriend of someone in the family who is utterly appalled by the behaviour of the family they are staying with/meeting.

• Traumatised Child - This is usually always a small child who has to witness the craziness of their family first hand and behaves in a certain way because of it.

• Embarrassing Grandparent(s) - Whether alone or with their equally awkward spouse, you can always count on them to say or do something that mortifies the rest of the family.

• Damaged Sibling/Cousin - Whether they have gone off the rails due to their messed up childhood or have just lost their way in life, there is always the sibling/cousin who doesn't quite feel they match up to the rest of their family.

• Loyal Pet [Optional] - Despite their entirely dysfunctional family, the lead character can always rely on their loyal pet. Or can they?

They don't necessarily have to be in the named role in their original movie (i.e. the character doesn't have to be a mother figure in their movie to be chosen as the inappropriate mother) however you do have to explain your reasoning behind your choice.

2.  Include the banner above in your post and link it to this post.

3. Comment on this post or e-mail flickchicks2014@gmail.com to let us know you have contributed.

We will as always (at some point) contribute ourselves to this masterpiece but until then we would love to hear your ideas for the most dysfunctional family in movies.

We also know that everyone is busy busy so we like to give you all a looooong lead time so we get the most amount of posts in by the deadline (then we end up waiting nearly 2 months before posting the round-up oops!!). 

So the deadline for this one is Friday 27th February but we are very flexible over here at Flick Chicks so if you miss the deadline, post anyway we'll add it in :-)

Happy family building...