ericobnn

This movie features an excessive amount of of little scenes that hint at, or foreshadow, something sinister, but that are never referenced again later on. They open a "plot thread" in the viewer's mind (e.g. "this person is suspicious", but since that person will never appear again to confirm or refute the viewer's initial hypothesis, the loose thread is never tied). It's the accumulation of these that makes for a frustrating experience by the end. It's as if the director expected the viewer to have forgotten most of those little occurrences by the end... shame on the director for underestimating the audience.

The protagonist's motives are never really explained and her personality is barely showcased, making for a flat main character that the viewer doesn't really empathize with. She comes across as just a generic, blasé, and cold rich woman that does the things she does because... reasons.

The scenes sometimes feel poorly connected to each other, with sudden jumps in time that skip over important things that (presumably) happened, but which are never shown, leaving the viewers to have to fill the gaps themselves. "Discontinuous" is perhaps the word I'm looking for.

A decidedly disappointing experience.

The movie is divided into 3 parts detailing 3 different times in the character's life, beginning with old age, then middle age, and finally teen age. The problem is that rather than being one cohesive whole, each part feels too separate, like standalone mini-movies. His teenage part, especially, feels pointless and completely removed from the other two. The story would not lose anything if this part was removed. And being half an hour long, that's an unacceptable waste of the viewer's time.

The filmography, acting, etc. Are all very good, but none of that can make up for a story told badly. The script is also rather sparse, with the main character speaking very very little throughout the whole movie, and way too many things being poorly explained as a result. It's difficult to understand what's going on or the character's motivations at times.

Girlfriend and I randomly picked this movie on Netflix because the premise looked interesting (based on Netflix's 2-line blurb). We dropped it just after the 10 minute mark, which is probably a new record. The dialogue is very cringeworthy and the acting, especially of the main heroine, is VERY bad. We very rarely comment or care about bad acting, the vast majority of actors are just passable and okay. This one wasn't! She overacts her facial expressions to a frankly ridiculous degree.

Only after coming here to IMDB did I find out it was a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. I guess that explains how extremely hard to believe and cringeworthy the plot and dialogue were (judging from the first 10 minutes, but most likely throughout the whole flick as well).