Review of Schultze Gets the Blues (2003) by Sarah L — 03 Aug 2008

At an hour and forty-five minutes, they shouldn't have spent an hour building up to Schultze's going to the bayou. I fell for the premise right away, but the pacing was far too lax. Schultze's little country cottage and his quiet life are quite charming, but we get pretty quickly that he leads a hermetical life.

Too much time was spent on that. Once he got to the bayou, though, things really got interesting. It just made me wish all the more that they hadn't taken so long to get him there. My antsiness gave me time to notice the fact that director Michael Schorr couldn't afford a dolly, so that every single scene is filmed with a stationary camera.

I didn't mind it exactly. You can't begrudge the filmmaker the budget (or lack thereof). But if he'd fixed his story's pacing, I probably wouldn't've noticed at all.