Sand

It's quite the list of recognizable names and faces that filmmaker Matt Palmieri somehow assembled for this flick, and on that basis one has to wonder how it came and went unnoticed in 2000. Then one sits to watch, and it is no longer any wonder at all. The dialogue, scene writing, and characters are obnoxious, amateurish, ill-considered rubbish from the very beginning, and from one scene to the next the film seems to become ever more empty and vapid. The old family and acquaintances of protagonist Tyler are written to be unlikable and boorish, yet apart from their abject villainy I see little meaningful distinction between the folks he has tried to leave behind and those he newly embraces. The music is bland and stale; Palmieri's direction hovers is almost constantly overcharged, and is often also stilted and contrived; the cast seem forced and/or unsure of themselves from one moment to the next. As we reach the one-third mark we can only hope that things will improve, but if they do it will be a wild sea change that's just as confounding as the bluster that greets us from the outset. 'Sand,' unfortunately, is not very good, and in fact it's almost unwatchable for how ham-fisted and questionable it is in every capacity.

Whatever the mood, however earnest or raucous it tries to be, the viewing experience is desperately hollow across the board. As we enter the second act and complications arise in the narrative the turn inspires a quizzical twist of the head, for the plot development isn't exactly believable. As the minutes tick by it almost seems like Palmieri is specifically trying to aggravate us, as if the movie were a test to see how long audience members could endure the pain of watching, for not only does it never improve but it only ever gets worse. There are ideas that were workable, certainly, and some odds and ends come off better than others, yet in every regard the whole is so immediately tawdry and tiresome that it's hard to care about those aspects that are done reasonably well. I see the possibilities of what the feature could have been, yet it's uniformly defined by such blunt, tactless, pointless, vacuous, heedless rot that all the value it could have claimed is sapped. When all is said and done I won't remember any of the positive qualities 'Sand' bore, only how exhausting it was to endure ninety minutes of Palmieri's worst impulses.

There was potential here, and it was squandered. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of this title, you won't find it, and I strongly suggest you find something else to watch. Let this 'Sand' be washed out to sea with the next wave.

"Sand" is a pretty bad movie. I won't waste your time with too much information. The only reason it gets 5 out of ten from me is Kari Wuhrer. God, what a babe! Her opening scene, where she's reunited with her brother Jack on the beach and meets Ty for the 1st time, is prefect. Its beautifully played and is by far the best scene in the movie, for this alone I like it. Unfortunately the movie just stinks. The language is really offensive, I don't mean simply profanity, I mean offensive. Still it might be fun for some to see Lovitz playing married with Julie Delpy and Denis Leary just being around for no good reason. There is some nice music and some nice opening beach shots of Ty as a kid with his Mom. Still "Sand" sinks rather quickly into a montage and want to be Greek tragedy. But again Kari on the beach... Sigh..

Matt Palmieri must go to a lot of Hollywood parties or be connected to somebody cool enough to line up this many b-list celebrity performers in one certifiably awful film. Is this a case of "paycheck time" or a case of "Hey, Harry Dean Stanton agreed to do it, why not join the party?" Maybe they all have the same agent who got a call asking for the whole group to do either 'The Surreal Life' or appear in this film. Either way, it's still Surreal Life. Stanton, Denis Leary, Jon Lovitz, Julie Delpy, Kari Wuhrer and Emilio Estevez...... what, no Janice Dickinson or Verne Troyer? Oops, this was made in pre-Surreal Life 1999 and only surfaced recently... like the bones of a corpse washing ashore. My mistake. And anyone else's mistake for watching this. Even back in 1999 the Tarantino copycats had worn out their welcome, but this flimsy tripe is more of a fifth generation carbon copy of a Tarantino rip-off. And even if you watch it for the interesting cast you get cheated. Sure, you get Leary phoning in his usual acerbic performance, but his lines are mostly weak. Then there is Stanton who has ONE scene, and Lovitz, Delpy and Estevez who have little more than that. These should really be uncredited "guest" performances but they're featured prominently on the video cover. The real stars are Vartan, Wuhrer and a bunch of other young actors who mostly posture and yell at each other virtually nose to nose throughout. It's the old game of covering weak dialogue by having the actors shout rather than speak. Ooh, the intensity. And the storyline is so wrong-headed that it seems to flow like a dream spun by idiots. No example of this is more telling than the endless back and forth battle between the low-life brothers and the surfer dudes--the surfers apparently believing, not once, not twice, but even three times, that their besting of low-lifes with GUNS (yet not relieving said low-lifes of their weapons) means the scumbags have learned their lesson and will not RETURN with their GUNS. Oh, why go on...this film is junk and leave it at that.

Normally I don't review movies I stopped watching halfway through, but this one is an exception because I watched it in fastforward til the end. I'll say this: Good casting all around, wonderful visual shots of the beach, cliffs, etc. But that's all this movie has to offer. Dull, dull, dull. C'mon scriptwriter, doesn't Tyler have a second memory of his mother?? Why put us through the same shots over and over again?? Do you wanna know why I rented this movie? Because Michael Vartan (Never Been Kissed) was on the cover, and that guy is HOT!! But c'mon Mike, if you're gonna star in a low budget drama/action film and do your usual puppy dog/ smoldering hunk-o-man thing you always do, could you at least have taken off your shirt, even once?? If you're going to do a boring, poorly written beach film, then at least give your female/gay male fans a reason to want to see it. And Mr. Screenwriter, if you're gonna have a good cast working your material, give them something to work with. I mean really. The first half was so DULL I stopped caring altogether. This was a movie where the lead guy was a Montgomery Clift protagonist/ good guy because that's who he is without explanation, and the bad guys are bad just because. It's like the movie was filmed without a script and the director said, "Okay, actors. Be yourselves, and ACTION!" Michael Vartan stood around with nothing to say, looking longingly into the distance, the redneck brothers slugged each other and playfought because that's what rednecks are supposed to do, and Denis Leary tried to say his lines real fast so as to make himself sound witty. The director needed to challenge his actors and the script needed to challenge the production. Routine with stock performances from good actors from better films, this moviegoer gives this film a big fat F. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.....

I'll give it a two for Denis Leary. He had some good lines, but that's it. What was the point? Where was the script? Who was supposed to act? A movie needs more than this one has to offer. Save the hour and a half to watch your hair grow, or fall out, whatever the case.