Flannel Pajamas

"Flannel Pajamas" opens with the meeting of Stuart and Nicole at a dinner party. Despite Stuart trumpeting his life philosophy in a narcissistic monologue, romance blooms, and by evening's end the pair are clearly besotted with each other. The film's Indie credentials are established over the next half hour with some fairly explicit love scenes, which add little to either plot or character development. In due course the lovers marry, put on their clothes and start criticizing each other - immediately transforming their bedroom's erotic intimacy into a zone of estrangement. Nicole gripes that Stuart doesn't listen to her and won't talk about his issues - while remaining secretive about her own. With communication and tenderness in short supply, the marriage turns rancid as complaints and evasions take center stage.

A troupe of peripheral characters come and go, priming the audience for plot-lines that never materialize, leaving "Flannel Pajamas" full of loose threads and soggy with irrelevant material. Most viewers will probably have had enough of this tiresome twosome long before the curtain falls.

Treat yourself to a cinematic love affair via the extremely personal, impressively detailed romantic drama Flannel Pajamas. In what is surely one of the most perceptive and intelligent scripts to emerge this decade detailing the intense highs and lows of a relationship, viewers are treated to an insiders look at the birth, fruition and eventual apathetic demise into one of the most richly detailed and believable love stories recently released. Credit the realistic script from director Jeff Lipsky, and two stellar, honest and open lead performances from Justin Kirk and Julianne Nicholson for skyrocketing this modest indie production into the history books of romantic cinema.

In detailing the exquisitely realized courtship, Lipsky's script (occasionally clunky and verbose amongst a majority of truthful ranting) taps into both harmonizing and colliding mentalities with equal passion and resonance, coming across as if were actually penned by two extremely intimate lovers. The amazing comfort these two leads bring to the table only helps bring the richly detailed dialog past the point of a petty fictionalization, and almost let's the viewer live vicariously through their most intimate moments in a completely engaging and believable manner. These characters may not be fleshed out to the satisfaction of some viewers and may remain irrelative to even more, yet the objective analysis this filmmaker has dedicated into studying the mechanics behind their vested interest remains unshakable. Of course, most films would be not be complete without some flaws, and for all the sheer integrity invested in portraying the sanctity of this partnership in a truthful light, the small budget feature does become bogged down with subplot's, supporting characters, and a weary conclusion that does not quite know how to finalize itself.

Suffering from your typical "third act syndrome", Flannel Pajamas follows a captivating lover's arc into a final act that betrays the intense honesty and character integrity found throughout for a resolution that feels ambiguous at best, and a closing scene that feels entirely unintuitive. Still, more mature, dialog-driven viewers will be hard pressed to find anything as substantial in the way of an honest love story told in the most human way possible that has come out in recent memory, which more then makes up for a weak conclusion.

I hated the characters. I didn't take sides with either of them because they were both very easy to dislike. This made the movie strange to me. In other movies, sometimes I have came across feeling sympathetic for the bad guy, or even rooting for them, but in this movie I just wanted the two leads to quit being so annoying.

Then it hit me. The reason it was so annoying is because it reminded me of personal experiences and people I interact with everyday. The movie ended up being very realistic once I gave it a chance... and I'll admit, it took me over 1.5 hours before I gave it that chance.

Once it was over, I appreciated my life. It touches on subjects that we have all faced and most of all, it touched on feelings we have all had.

As much as I hated it, I also loved it. If you like to give movies a chance and you have 2 hours of time with lots of patience, I'd recommend giving it a try.

They tried to make a grown-up film about why people fall in and out of love. They took a chance in a daring way to deal with a fundamentally adult story. They should be congratulated for that. The thing is...they failed.

The biggest problem with this film is the writing and editing. They characters are unsympathetic (needy in a "worst of Woody Allen" way). They tell you what the characters are, but the don't back it up with deeds. They just say the words and you're supposed to believe it. They should have shown it.

Instead, too much time is spent in silent prolonged emptiness that is meant to be profound. Did the editor know what the term pacing means? If every dull scene is prolonged by silence from minute one to minute one-hundred twenty...you lose the meaning of the pause. It's suppose to have a tempo.

The simple act of dropping the first and last five frames of every scene would have made this film almost enjoyable and taken 15 minutes off the running time. One scene where a fully nude Julianne Nicholson stands in front of a row of windows goes on so long that I out of sheer boredom spent the time counting the freckles on her body. I counted 27,342 myself. You are free to do your own count. Counting Julianne Nicholson's freckles (as adorable as they are) doesn't make a film.

If someone knows a good editor, have them take a crack at this picture. They couldn't help but improve it.

Flannel Pajamas was intelligent. The dialogue is exceptionally well written and manages to keep the viewer in the movie - as most good "Indie" flicks often do. It is more of a character/relationship study than anything. These types of movies often get overlooked when it comes to critics or the general public. It is understandable how someone who likes "XXX" with Vin Diesel would hate this movie - opposite ends of the spectrum. Likewise, for those of you that loathe the unimaginative huge budget big-named action films that pollute Hollywood and movie screens across the country, you'll love this one. Flannel Pajamas is a much needed break from the mainstream.

Julianne Nicholson and Justin Kirk have excellent chemistry together, doing a superb job of portraying a couple adapting to modern-day problems that threaten to tear them apart. It comes together as a poignant love story of opposites attracting and making it work.