Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Alexander Z — 28 Jan 2010
Synecdoche, New York is a great example of a film that sinks under its own weight. Many reviewers have already pointed out the fact that it's incredibly too self-referential, but my main problem is that not once did I feel sorrow or empathy for the characters, and yet it was clearly trying to make it happen in the last 30 minutes or so.
The score swells, monologues occur, but they hit you out of the blue. There's literally no build-up, no reason to care. The positives: there is some great intelligent humor and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who I'm not always a fan of, gives an amazing performance.
Perhaps it's not a versatile one, but I thought it worked very well given the context. However, I couldn't help thinking the entire time that it was just a rehash of Adaptation with a different ending and more serious theme.
I really wanted to like this one, but it left me with nothing.
This review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) was written by Alexander Z on 28 Jan 2010.
Synecdoche, New York has generally received positive reviews.
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