The Leisure Class

I just binged through the last season of Project Greenlight and right before the final episode, I decided to give "The Leisure Class" a chance. I'd already read the reviews on IMDb and seen that the movie had a 3.9, but felt like I was better served in making my own judgement, despite the bias of having watched the show.

The movie is flawed, for sure and having watched the show, it's hard to feel like it couldn't have been better if a few things had gone differently.

That said, this is definitely worth a watch. It IS funny. It's a dark comedy. This reminds me more of "Running With Scissors" or "Death At A Funeral," but certainly not as good as either.

Ed Weeks, Tom Bell and Bridget Regan are all spot on. The flaws lie more in the script than anything else. Sadly, this flick seems to have been the death knell for Jason, Tom and the Project Greenlight series.

I would absolutely encourage anyone to give this movie a shot; it is worth your time.

And regarding other comments:

1. It is funny! 2. Fiona evolves and comes out STRONG. 3. Character development is there, though it doesn't follow the typical three act structure, WHICH, if you watched Greenlight, you should be aware of. By the end of the flick, if you don't care about ANY of the characters, then you may have missed the point.

The Leisure Class is the film green lit by the fourth season of Project Greenlight, this year produced by HBO and won by neophyte filmmaker Jason Mann.

For those of you unfamiliar with Project Greenlight, it is a competition produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (and previously co-produced by Chris Moore who was inexplicably absent this season) in which one winner gets to make a movie. The applicants are typically burgeoning cinema creators or drowning creatives who long ago took the safe route of a standard job. After a hiatus, the fourth season finally returns after a ten year lull, and this time New York film student Jason Mann won. Initially Mann was to direct a film written by season one winner Pete Jones called "Not Another Pretty Woman" but after some finagling, Mann won over HBO and was able to direct his own project, The Leisure Class.

I'm a huge fan of the heart and premise of Project Greenlight – give someone, who would otherwise not have a chance at breaking into Hollywood, the opportunity to make a movie. There is something interesting about watching these bright eyed individuals learn about the indie film maker's experience dealing with a studio, a la getting thrown into the deep end. Without fail though, you end up cheering for the Greenlight winner and inevitably form a bias in your experience of the final project. In an effort to truly watch the film with favoritism, I refrained from watching the series after episode two and skipped right to the movie.

The premise for The Leisure Class is not complicated in anyway, a British man named William is about to marry into an 'old money' Connecticut family. This happy occasion is turned on its head when William's eccentric brother turns up and the truth of William's pedigree and intentions can no longer be hidden.

The Leisure Class as a film is riddled with problems from start to finish, which makes us shudder at the thought of the state of Not Another Pretty Woman, the initial screenplay which was to be made. Character development, acting, plot, tone, structure, cinematography, production design, editing – basically everything needs work and feels like a rough first draft that should never see the light of day except as a canistered film on a shelf.

If you pick away at all the physical imperfections, what comes down to it is The Leisure Class is a weak script. The pacing is terrible, unbearably slow and monotonous at the start, with bouts of fleeting and nonsensical mania. The core events of the film do create a substandard plot, but the dialogue and transitional occurrences to get us from one main plot point to the next are absent. Tonally, The Leisure Class is off-putting, jumpy and abrasive while being equally pointless.

Yes, the actors could have brought more to their roles than what was there on paper, especially the feebly written females, most notably Bridget Regan who plays Fiona, but that minor fix would not have been enough to save the film. The two leads, played by Ed Weeks and Tom Bell, who are the heart of the film needed significant guidance based on their performances which a more experienced director would have noticed or edited around. Their banter, which seems excessively ad-libbed at times, needed to be reined in considerably so that the core structure of the film was retained. Listening to the dialogue, you long for the characters to get to the point, patiently waiting for the movie to start, which it never does.

It seems as though Jason Mann was given every opportunity to succeed and utilize this film as a catalyst for his career and exemplification of his talents as a film maker. Based on The Leisure Class, Mann needs to go back to the basics of exciting and compelling story-telling before jumping into filming.

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I just finished watching HBO's latest season of Project Greenlight and it's resulting movie, The Leisure Class. Because of editing, and well you know TV, I'm not sure whether the director or the producer was the bigger problem with this endeavor. The show was entertaining, the movie was not. While the acting was solid, with decent performances all around, this dark comedy was not funny. The story was not interesting or new but you could see the actors trying to work with what was essentially a stale script. It looked like exactly what it is, a low budget film from a first time director who thinks way to highly of himself.

I'd watch the show and skip the movie. Yet another big "Meh" a for Project Greenlight film and this falls completely on the director and producer.

I have a feeling that the crucifixion of this movie in the user comments is from PGL viewers who didn't like Jason on the show, didn't get their film selected, or were sticking up for Effie. The most difficult part of enjoying the movie was the fact that most of the scenes were shown out of sequence during PGL, so you already knew the ending before the movie started.

I would call this a dark humor movie, but not necessarily film noir. It does try to shine the light on the troubles of the rich family, but a lot of that doesn't come until the third act. There were a few plot holes, and frankly some of the scenes don't quite ring true. The acting was good though and there were more than a few lines that I laughed at (in particular towards the end).

Normally the brothers would have had a flashback to develop their characters more, but as the movie was effectively a one location picture, they had to do all of it with dialogue that worked for the most part. The Fiona character was developed well enough, I think; however, the sisters and the mother, while competently acting, didn't have a lot of dialogue to offer except for the third act. Bruce Davison was spot on, as usual.

There were a few uncomfortable moments in the beginning, but maybe I adjusted or perhaps the tone became more even because I liked it a lot more at the end then I did in the beginning; the final shot is excellent. Give the director and writers credit, that is a strength that most movies don't have even if they had ten times the budget.

I've been watching Project Greenlight along with all the other reviewers here, but I feel like these reviews have generally been unfair and weighted by feelings from the show.

The story is solid. You've seen some derivative of it before, but find me one you haven't. The character development could be stronger, most of these people are thin stereotypes, but, again, find me a movie not full of them. You do get a sense of who the 2 main characters are immediately, tho and their chemistry is fantastic. They're the heroes of this movie and they bolster it all the way through. The comedy is good: farcical slapstick. although I personally would have liked to see it ramped up a bit more. As was stated in the show, I would also have liked to see more progression in the main female lead and the pacing does feel a bit rushed.

Overall a good solid effort with a few great performances. Not your favorite movie but enjoyable, and certainly not as pannable as the sour-grape-eating, wannabe-directors have reviewed here.