billyweeds

I was very much looking forward to this movie, having admired all of Whit Stillman's previous films, especially his latest, the 1998 "The Last Days of Disco." So I was beyond disappointed to discover that "Damsels in Distress" is virtually unwatchable. Is it pretentious? Hard to describe it that way since it doesn't seem to be trying for anything. People sit around or walk around or dance around and chatter in a kind of language that appears to be spawned on an alien planet. Greta Gerwig, whom I have liked in a couple of other movies, is completely lost and inept spouting the idiot dialogue she's given, and the problem extends to the entire cast. I laughed out loud exactly once. Most of the time I cringed and groaned. The movie is absolutely awful and a must to avoid unless you have been losing sleep and need to catch up. No, scratch that. Insomnia is preferable to this debacle.

This is the worst movie of 2011 so far and unlikely to be challenged. The first ten minutes are excellent, setting the stage for a lovely dramedy about a middle-class couple braving the horrors of NYC private kindergarten, with an attractive Neil Patrick Harris and Bonnie Somerville filling the bill nicely. And there's Amy Sedaris--such a winning comedian. But noooooo. Before you know it, this charming human comedy devolves into one of the unfunniest, loudest, crudest, lewdest movies imaginable. The actors are lost--Sedaris becomes monotonous, Harris a snooze, and all the rest of them unbearable. The very idea that pornographic IMs could be mistaken for poetry by sentient New Yorkers is so unbelievable that the whole premise falls apart, and it just gets worse and worse by the nanosecond. This is one of the most inept films in memory.

This movie is one of a kind--the only screamingly funny comedy which also makes you really care about its characters. It's one of the best comedies in the history of movies, and certainly the best comedy of the last decade...and beyond.

How often has a movie made you fall out of your chair with laughter and then, not ten seconds later, tugged at your heartstrings? This great film has that effect.

Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy deserve starring and supporting Oscars respectively, and Wiig deserves a writing award to boot. The whole cast, from Rose Byrne to Chris O'Dowd to Maya Rudolph to Jon Hamm, deserves outspoken praise. The movie is quite indescribably wonderful.