Review of The Florida Project (2017) by Arianne H — 11 Feb 2018

Had high hopes for watching a fascinating drama with insight into the living conditions of a child's life in a Florida motel, but found that the plotless pointless movie glossed over the hardcore realities that accompany this lifestyle. The trashy mother Halley, was a flat one-dimensional caricature who fails to evoke any empathy from the audience for all her tricks and antics.

She was immature, useless and wasted her youth and her good health. The daughter, Mooney was a wonderful young actress, charming and beguiling. William Dafoe, gave great depth to his role and was astonishing even when he was standing there saying nothing but taking it all in. Dafoe's performance was the very best thing about this otherwise flat and stalled movie. Despite being overly melodramatic, the movie is boring. Very boring. An episode of Law and Order tells the same story and has more empathetic characters, better writing and a better plot. The ending is a complete cop-out that fails although the juxtapositions of the trash motels with Disney names are fascinating in stark contrast to the actual Disney world. The ending misses it's mark, and was the only hope for redemption of 1 hour and 50 some-odd moments of utter boredom. Their lives in this motel would have been harsher, much grittier, but this is a very superficial look. Disappointment.