Review of Beginners (2011) by Tim E — 21 Jul 2014

This film marketed itself as cute and quirky and it definitely was cute and quirky. the problem was that it also had an interesting premise and the potential to be a great film, but ultimately offerend nothing more than the layer of quirk on the surface.

it was a good film, but there was nothing special or outstanding about it that separated it from the the thousands of other cute and quirky films being made each year. the film reveals little more than what you can gather from the trailer, which was a disappointment.

the characters and their relationships were kept at a surface, they were all character log lines: the gay father, the depressed son with commitment issues who's (surprise surprise) an artist, the foreign, quirky girl who makes him fall in love with her bizarreness - these are all stereotypes which could have led to something more if they were further explored as individual characters, but unfortunately they weren't.

in fact, every time the characters were about to have a conversation which revealed their thoughts/personalities/conflicts, the film would just play music over it - to me it just looked lazy and made me not care about the characters.

over all, I felt like the film had an interesting premise, but was far from being fully developed.