Review of All Good Things (2010) by Qritq — 24 Dec 2010

From the opening strains of Steely Dan's "Daddy don't live in that New York City no more," I had a bad feeling about "All Good Things.".

Released in 1975, the album Katy Lied was Steely Dan's 4th studio album, and it is difficult to understand how it could have been playing on anyone's radio in 1971, when our movie opens...

A fine cast, and apparently proficient crew managed to create a movie in which no one is like-able, and not one person, let alone the music supervisor, could get it together to have a contemporary song playing in the opening scene.

Missing wife, hapless "disco people" brother, best friends, U.S. Senators; you name them, there's a pretty good reason no to like any of them. We are encouraged to hate the rich, the poor, the powerful and the powerless equally.

Okay, I liked the dog.

As you are probably already aware, the film is a thinly veiled fictionalization of a tabloid story from the 80's, and then 2000's, that follows, through voice-overs, the unfortunate, often tragic (for others) life of a NYC real estate heir.

There's goofy love story stuff, Oedipus-sy angles, requisite disco-era drug use... all perfectly fine components for a good story except - we don't care about one person we meet in the movie.

Kirsten Dunst's portrayal of Katie McCarthy brings us as close as we get to someone we like, but for whatever reason, her inability to remove herself from the circumstances that eventually, (obviously), lead to her disappearance makes it tough to care for even her.

Ryan Gosling is fine as the tortured, hapless son, Frank Langella is as always, a unique presence in a film, and Philip Baker Hall almost wins us over as Malvern - but sadly, we care what happens to absolutely no one in the film-- and face it, if we're not rooting for somebody we're really just rooting that this pondering mess of a film just finally come to a merciful end.