Fim da Linha

I'm constantly looking for new Brazilian films by young directors, so I always end up in festivals watching some good/bad movies just waiting to be forgotten. Some that I miss at festivals, I get to watch on cable TV (like this one), but that only seems to happen when the movie is a lousy one (but I'll still keep trying). Fim da Linha (End of Line) wants to be everything (funny, political, anarchic, sharp), but most of all, it tries really hard to be a smart movie, failing completely.

Although it has good performances by the great Rubens De Falco and the very good Leonardo Medeiros (if you dig south American movies, keep an eye on this guy), the rest of the cast just look like a bunch of d.umb people walking by, cruising and talking s**t all the time, and i cannot exactly blame them for that (except for the kid Eucir De Souza, he's dreadful. fact!). Though the movie has no great technical flaw, the script is mind blowing dumb, not in a sense that "hey, it's a movie, it doesn't need to be reality", but in a "hey, how about writing funny jokes and some stuff that, if not real, could at least make some sense" way. I reckon a few ideas and lines were pretty good even, but that just adds to the failure. This was a cheap movie, i don't doubt that, but that's just not an excuse for it's many flaws. I just wished it was better as it could've been. At least the movie has a good montage with "The Way We Get By", by Spoon.

And after all that I said, this movie is maybe similar in tone to European and American movies made directly to television, so this might find it's audience somewhere, but in Brasil, there is no market for the made-to-TV movies, and that, although I almost always dislike these movies, is nonsense, cos it still manages to be funnier than most of the comedy in Brazilian television (and by that i mean, there are dozens of awful comedy in our TV).

This is a perfect example of how one would define a lousy movie. The script is dumb and pretentious, the acting is embarrassing and the direction is absolutely amateur. The initial idea is not bad at all, which makes the result even worse. In many parts the movies tries to be sarcastic and critic, but the result is rather silly. I've watched this movie in a premier in São Paulo, and the only reason I did not walk out the theater in the middle of the movie is because part of the cast was in the audience. And I really felt sorry for those people, for if I were on their shoes, I would hate to have my name involved in such a piece of rubbish. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't have to pay to watch for this one. However, I've lost 2 hours of my life which I never get back...