Review of It's All About Love (2003) by Katie R — 30 May 2009

Wow. I never thought I'd actually truly hate a Joaquin Phoenix movie. Congratulations, Thomas Vinterberg. You've succeeded where no other director has. This might actually be the most pretentious movie I've ever seen. It's both incredibly shallow and ridiculously heavy handed at the same time.

Here's the needlessly twisty plot... Joaquin Phoenix has some kind of not really defined teaching job. He's on his way there when he stops for a layover in New York, planning to meet his world famous ice-skater wife Claire Danes at the airport to sign divorce papers. She does show up, and he gets taken back to her hotel where he gets talked into staying for the night. The two seem pretty uninterested in each other. Then all of a sudden there's some sort of elaborate plot against Danes, and without really knowing what it is or why they're running from it, the two fall in love again. I don't really understand why. The conspiracy gets deeper and weirder. And for some reason Sean Penn is playing Joaquin's brother, who is almost always on a plane, talking about.... you know, I'm not actually sure what he's talking about.

It's set in the near future, about 10 years from now, and the only thing that really shows that is some really weird stuff. One day a year all the fresh water in the world freezes. The world is cooling down so drastically that it's snowing EVERYWHERE in JULY. When people are heartbroken they just drop dead. And for some reason, the Ugandans are flying. I don't know.

So, obviously that title means something. Yeah, it is all about love. Get it? Because without love, you just drop dead in the middle of the street and people walk over you. Without love the whole world starts to freeze over. And without love.... Ugandans start to fly? Okay, I'm not actually sure about that last one...

Yes, this is all very heavy handed. Unforgivably so. But it might have been somewhat bearable if the love story we were given actually had some depth to it, some emotion, something at all. It's not so much that Danes and Phoenix have no chemistry. They do have some (although it's not exactly boiling over). It's just written so shallowly and predictably and without any heart. It's never clear exactly why they split up in the first place, other than she really liked her career and maybe had some drug problems possibly. Then we think, "Well, maybe it's just because they're pretty damn indifferent to each other". And then BAM, they're on the run and all of a sudden... hey, look, they love each other again. I don't know why running away without knowing why made that happen, but oh well. And then ignoring all the problems that they may have split up over in the first place, they're suddenly in it again for the long haul. There's no conflict in this relationship that was, in the beginning, supposed to be all about conflict. And there's not a shred of emotion in their reconnection.

I guess that's part of why Sean Penn's there, other than to update us on the wacky weather around the world. He's writing some report (for god knows who) on the "state of the world". And it becomes clear very quickly that in his report, the state of the world is "all about love". So he's basically there to tell us how great this love between these two characters is, in case we forget. Or in case the bad writing keeps us from seeing it.

As for the acting... Danes is decent. It's an odd role to say the least, and she does well with what she's given. Phoenix, on the other hand. It's not like he was really bad throughout. It's just that I'm pretty sure there were days that he showed up on the set not giving a damn. You can tell in the film when those days were. They're the ones where he doesn't even bother to use an accent (they play a Polish couple). They're also probably the ones when he sounds like he's going to fall asleep. I can't blame him on that last part. If I was reading these lines all day, I'd probably want to take a nap too.

The actual conspiracy could have been pretty interesting, if it unfolded in a way that wasn't all about the supposedly great love between these two characters. There's an interesting story for a really smart thriller buried somewhere deep, deep, very deep in this movie.

If there's one absolutely positive thing I can say about this movie is that, visually, it's stunning and absolutely beautiful. Amazing lighting, great costuming, wonderful cinematography.

And then there are flying Ugandans. Seriously.... I can't even wrap my head around what that might mean.