samzzz-69448

This film is essentially a German version of Warner Bros' 2007 dramedy The Bucket List (since Der Geilste Tag is also distributed by WB, one wonders if this is actually a localized remake of the film), with a few notable modifications, the most obvious one being that the central duo are now young men presumably in their late 20s.

The film does a decent job presenting its premise and the scenery, shot in the same vein as 2013's Ben Stiller vehicle The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, is beautiful to behold, combining to make a passable road movie. Unfortunately, the film suffers from a lack of real depth in its two central characters. The Bucket List, whose screenplay had not been one of its strengths, at least presented its main characters in a roughly convincing fashion, and was really helped by Nicholson and Freeman's reliably amazing performances. Here in Der Geilste Tag, the combination of the script and the two main actors are not on the same level. The overuse of montage, which breaks apart any notion of rhythm and reasonable pacing, also serves to mask the fact that plot wise, there is simply not a lot of interesting stuff going on here compared to better road movies. There is an abundance of cheesy American pop music (way too many of them to the point of distracting) that would make even an average mainstream Hollywood comedy pale in comparison. Along with such uninspiring cliches as "today is the first day of the rest of your life" message (which most first year film school student would find boring) from a fortune cookie, all the little details, which are still creative decisions on the filmmakers' part, do not at all help with a film where the subject matter is supposed to be serious.

As a road movie about the bonding of two men, this film just about passes the mark. As a dramedy touching on such a sensitive topic, it fails to meet its potential. Since I rated The Bucket List 7/10, this film gets a 6 from me.

I only came to the knowledge of this film's existence by browsing through Blake Lively's IMDB page, and was frankly shocked to see the unbelievably low number of votes (in the 600s at this time). Even more so, I was flabbergasted when I saw that this film carries a production budget of $30M and only managed less than $1M in its limited theatrical run. Usually these numbers indicate a huge bomb caused by universal dislike from the critics and the general audience, but judging by the ridiculously small amount of votes here, the complete lack of exposure of any kind it indicates, and the mediocre scores, this is also not the case. Curious, I watched this film, and now I think I can see why.

All I See Is You is an underwhelming film with a weak story and is also a creative misfire, in the sense that it does not present itself in any way as a coherent package with a clearly defined target audience. As a drama film, the film's mainstream appeal is clearly far from wide, and it isn't anywhere close to being experimental or avant-garde (not to mention no sane producer/investor would greenlight a arthouse production at even 1/10 of the budget of this one).

Narratively the story is loosely written with a slow pace (especially in the beginning) that doesn't allow the film to gather much momentum. When the screen isn't showing you a scene that's clearly a part of the main storyline, I couldn't even ascertain if what I was watching was going to be developed into a subplot, or if it's just a random scene depicting a random minutiae that fills the screen time. I did not watch this movie expecting that I'd be hugely entertained, but it should have been obvious to the filmmakers that intercutting narratively unimportant scenes with random flashbacks is clearly insufficient to keep the audience interested, when the main storyline is so thin. When moments of drama finally arrive, they lack the originality, or the creative punch that comes with a well thought-out, well executed plot point, to really surprise and satisfy viewers. There's hardly any momentum building as the story progresses, which explains the lack of tension I felt when the film reached its supposed climax.

Visually, this film simply contains too many shots where the cinematographer seems to be trying very hard to bring to the screen the blind girl's view of the world, all in a very impressionist and therefore distracting manner. In my opinion this was overkill, and it ended up creating an overall look that's more gimmicky than beautiful.

It also conveyed a sense of alienation to me, as it made me want to talk to the screen, 'hey, I'm not blind, that's why I'm watching this, so could you please stop showing me what the world may seem from the blind girl's perspective (not to mention that that perspective should be pitch blackness if she was really blind) show me something that's actually interesting, like the actual story.'

Instead, one can edit out all the shots of this type in this film, put them together, and you'd get a fine contender for "32 potentially interesting short clips for my Windows OS screensaver" or "video to play on the big screen at a Blur concert". It wears off rather quickly and becomes tedious after the initial novelty. I also find that parts of the soundtrack to be at odds to what the scenes were trying to portray.

With a medium sized budget for a drama film at $30M (which means the producers were obviously expecting a wide theatrical release and for the film to not be a flop for that kind of release, in order to stand a chance at turning a profit), some of these creative decisions are simply baffling.

In fact, you can go check the production budget for most of 2017's Oscar bait films, like 3 Billboards, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water etc, and these films all have roughly the same level of production budget as All I See Is You. It really is mind-boggling. I'm not saying the end product is too generic. In fact, I do suspect that, had the film been made in a more by-the-book standard Hollywood fashion, it likely would have gotten a better result.

Well, it can hardly get worse than the current situation, where the box office is practically negligible against the costs. I still find it really hard to believe the number of votes here, which suggests that practically nobody except those who literally came across it/stumbled upon it have seen this, which is quite ridiculous, and as a Blake Lively fan, I don't even know how she would feel about accepting this role as the follow up to 2016's surprise hit The Shallows.

I get it that the very idea of 'what if a blind girl recovers her sight somehow, and discovers that the world isn't quite as she thought it was' is a novel one and has potential, but that idea ALONE can only support a short film, granted it can be a very interesting 15 minute vignette if done well. The filmmakers simply failed to expand on the central premise here, and what we get is a feature length film that is a bore to sit through.