Review of Home Sweet Hell (2015) by John M — 24 Apr 2015

Like nails on a chalkboard. So this is about a furniture store owner (Patrick Wilson) who has apparently married a superficial robot (Katherine Heigl), because all she cares about is having the storybook perfect life, and none of the surrounding details matter in the slightest.

When he confesses to having an affair with a new employee that is now trying to extort money out of them (Jordana Brewster), it is soon revealed the extent she is willing to go to maintain status quo for her life.

I think I have to preface this review with expressing my active hatred of Katherine Heigl. I initially liked her in Knocked Up, but ever since she criticized Judd Apatow as being sexist for putting her in that role, I completely dismissed her as being a hypocrite, given that every project she's worked on thereafter has been exponentially more sexist and degrading to women ever since (i.

E. The Ugly Truth). She is incapable of playing a character that is not a complete harpy, and ten minutes into this, I could tell this was going to be something that I would end up deploring, because it rubbed me the wrong way at every turn.

I typically like Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring, Little Children), but I sure didn't here, and that's really the major problem: you feel nothing but disdain for every single character. I hated Heigl's character because she's vapid, selfish and privileged, I hated Wilson's character because of his infidelity and the fact that he is so prone to constantly say the wrong thing every other line, and I hated Brewster's character because she is such a gold digger.

On top of all that, I never really understood why this couple would have gotten married in the first place; they seem to have nothing but contempt for each other because they are so incompatible, and they really don't have anything in common, given that they have two completely different sets of ideals.

They squabble so much that I was yelling at the screen for him to just tell her off and walk away from her. Not that it would have mattered if he did, mind you; she isn't somebody that listens, being that she is only concerned for her own well-being.

For example, her reaction to being told that her husband is cheating on her? Worried about what other people will think about her should this get out. This is a film that grated me the wrong way at every moment.

Nobody in here acts like a real person, and Heigl can drop off the face of the Earth for all I care. She plays characters that work every nerve in my body, hitting every single pet peeve I have for female characters.

It's awkward, not funny, and it reaches tonally jarring levels of darkness when it wraps everything up. We aren't even half way through this calendar year, and I have already found my front runner for worst film of the year.

Avoid this at all costs.