Review of Junebug (2005) by Chads. — 24 Feb 2006
Ashley(Amy Adams) has so much life in her, and Johnny(Ben McKenzie) is such a putz, you sort of wish the filmmaker didn't invest the latter with a sympathetic side. If Johnny was irredeemable, "Junebug" would be criticized for turning rural folks into hicks.
One day in the not-too-distant future, Ashley is going to turn into her mother-in-law(Celia Weston). Johnny, as in Johnny-can't-read(he struggles with "Huckleberry Finn", and the Cliff Notes), doesn't deserve her.
The film sort of obscures this fact. Amy Adams is great. She's sort of like a live-action Luanne(from "King of the Hill"). Madeleine(Embeth Davidtz), a purveyor of "outsider art", views Ashley more as a beguilling character than a person, like her litany of non-sequitirs were a brand of innocuous performance art.
What Madeliene doesn't do at the end of the film is absolutely heartless. Ashley, at the very least, needs to enroll at a community college.
This review of Junebug (2005) was written by Chads. on 24 Feb 2006.
Junebug has generally received positive reviews.
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