The Californians

Great cast and a potentially good story, but it just didn't happen. I found it to be boring and without a decent plot to make one interested in the movie. With only a few comedic moments and some good music/vocal moments.... it was not enough to make this a movie worth watching. I'm glad I caught it on cable (Showtime) and didn't waste my money in the San Francisco area to see it. I doubt it will see a premiere anywhere but in California.

The movie starts out as a message about destroying/preserving the beautiful land that the money hungry developers want to consume, but then transcends into a romance between the two fractions of indifference. The movie offers nothing other than a waste of time.

This is an unpretentious movie that offers a bit of a nice diversion from one's other interests. I enjoyed it because I live in California, and could identify with a number of characters in the film (knowing some activists, real estate developers, Bay Area residents, etc). I also realized that I had visited some of the filming locations over the years in my travels.

While it is no Citizen Kane, it is certainly not a waste of time. I would recommend it as a nice "date flick" to be enjoyed with one's significant other, some light conversation and a bottle of Napa wine. Better yet, if you are a romantic, order a dozen raw oysters and a bottle of your favorite champagne with which to woo your significant other, and connect with the film in a poly-sensorial way. (You will need to see The Californians it to understand what I am writing about.)

It is difficult to believe that this discerning cast would have involved themselves in this project if the initial reading proved to be as unsatisfying as the finished work.

Another work, John D. McDonalds' book "Condominium", for example, dealt with similar subject matter but with an intelligence and style that allowed the protagonists to be understandable and even sympathetic characters in spite of their flaws. In "The Californians" the characters appeared unaware of the importance of the world around them while wandering aimlessly through their own, increasingly trivial, lives.

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling:

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs

and blaming it on you ... chances are you haven't grasped the

situation! "

I agree with baxterp and really don't have much more to say, although I can't resist saying something.

Too many movie critics are overly impressed with movies that convey a one sided political perspective and fail to notice how one sided and underdeveloped the characters in such films tend to be. Think Syriana, The American President, The Insider, Erin Brockovich.

What is clever about The Californians is that an ostensibly demonized character, a housing developer, has a sympathetic and warm side, while his sister, an environmental activist, has a jealous and vindictive streak. Even the roles of "developer" and "activist" were shown to have multiple facets.

Finally, the love story between Gavin and Zoe was nicely woven into the above plot twists.

A true sleeper only appreciated by those not blinded by political activism.

I live in Marin County where this flick was filmed and was an extra in it. I remember watching Jonathan Parker direct his actors and thinking, "This is gonna look better in the finished product. It HAS to." Because what I was seeing looked laughably amateurish. If not for the presence of name actors like Noah Wylie and Illiana Douglas, I would have assumed I was watching the production of a student film.

Well, when this baby finally hit screens at the Mill Valley Film Festival, I was surprised to find my suspicions had been correct: no amount of editing or re-packaging was gonna polish this turd.

What's too bad about all this is that, at its core, the movie had some good ideas. The ongoing battle between slick, greedy developers and aging, environmentalist hippie boomers is a very real one here in the Bay Area, and there's ample hypocrisy and fodder for satire on both sides.

But Parker gets lost in a sea of tired clichés and labored, talky dialog and in the end can't decide what kind of movie he wants to make. Is it a satire of the tug-of-war between progress and preservation and the colorful players involved? Or is it a sappy, love-triangle romance? Or how about the tale of a short-sighted man's redemption by way of a flighty young songbird? The Californians tries to be all these things (and more) and ends up being nothing more than a muddled, uneven mess.