Homewrecker

I watched this because it had the guy from the League in it, but about 30 minutes in I had to turn it off. Perhaps too "Indy" for my taste. It tries too hard to be something, what that is I really don't know. IMDb requires 10 lines for a review to be published and there is no way I can do that talking about this movie. Instead I will tell you a bunch of movies I did like. Children of Men, Pi, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, one flew over the cuckoos nest, The shining, Braveheart, Dirty Harry, October sky, The Lost Boys, Boys in the hood, Shawshank Redemption, the devils back bone, Austin Powers ( yup), 40 year old virgin, silence of the lambs, the re- animator, all of the Faces of Death documentaries, history of the world, Heat, 2001 a space odyssey, The 300, Glory, days of thunder, and billy Madison.

This film has subtlety and charm. The main actors, Ana Reeder and Anslem Richardson, are irresistible and I found myself agog to see what would happen next. The storyline takes unexpected left turns while staying on the edge of believable due to the consistency of the two main characters. They are "true to themselves" throughout and "Margo's" charm (natural and produced as needed) fits like a glove with "Mike's" humanity. Margo's facial expressions as she thinks about how she will get what she wants and believes she needs, have the transparency of a five year old girl who is aware of her own prettiness and the vulnerabilities of men. Both Reeder and Richardson are great fun to watch and give much pleasure to the viewer.

I have to take issue with both reviewers that preceded me. This film misses the mark. It has the mark of amateurism all over it. Don't get me wrong I have seen a lot of amateur films that were made better because they have a fresh point of view. It was a great idea but in this case it did not work.

The primary problem in my view is the script. Did the writers have to hurry the writing process too much? Did they not consider the actor's strong points? Does it fail because of an inexperienced director? Could be all of these.

The actors appear to be fully capable of crafting a good performance but the words they are given to say just do not fit with their characters. A comedy is a hard thing to make successful. Maybe the makers can be forgiven for failing so badly.

With the write script and some better situations and stronger characterizations this could have been very funny. To me, at least, this film is just plain boring. About 3/4 of the way through I just gave up. I have seen thousands of films and almost never failed to finish one. The Locksmith just asked too much of me.

If you want to see a successful quirky comedy check out "Smiley Face".

But in the case of The Locksmith quirky just does not work. Sorry to be the skunk at the picnic!