Review of Spring (2014) by Troy S — 05 Apr 2015

For all its "genre-bending" pretensions, this movie is, at heart, a romance. And as a romance, it fails for three simple reasons:

1. The lead character was horribly miscast. I'm not familiar with the work of Lou Taylor Pucci, but he clearly wasn't suited for this role. Evan needed to be a character with charisma, or at least occasional charm; Pucci has neither of either, and isn't good-looking enough anyway. Of course, part of the problem may be that...

2. The character of Evan was underwritten, leaving nothing for Pucci to work with in the first place. There is simply no conceivable reason why the beautiful, witty, and erudite Louise would be at all interested in the drab, dour, and generic Evan. And there's one more fatal flaw here, which is that...

3. The leads have ZERO chemistry together. You can't fake that, even if you're working with terrific actors and an excellent script--and that's not the case here.

Despite its intelligence, its occasional insights, and its perfectly pitched tone, I can't recommend Spring.