Review of The Hollars (2016) by Mike K — 02 Sep 2016

The Hollars is a film written by James C. Strouse, directed and starring John Krasinski, while also starring Anna Kendrick, Margo Martindale, SHarlto Copley, and Richard Jenkins. The Hollars follows Krasinski's character as he reconnects with his family after a traumatic event that happened to his Mother (Martindale).

This movie shines when it comes down to the chemistry between the actors, it was it's strongest feature. It is especially strong when it's Krasinski paired with either Kendrick or Martindale. The humor, the points that need to hit, and just the regular moments shine with Krasinski's ability to get what he needs to out of the actor or actress he is paired with. Krasinski's strong suit as an actor and as a director is his ability to heighten and achieve the performance of whoever he is acting with (as we've seen so many times from his previous movies and tv shows).

The female characters in this story are also the stronger are more essential characters in the film as through their dialogue and their performances find was to move the film forward. They also seemed more connected with Krasinski's character and grounded in reality.

Those are probably the only two positive points about this movie, the movie is unfocused, has way too many useless and overdramatic subplot/plot twists, male characters only their for comedic effect, horrible editing, horrible humor that a disney channel show would find unfunny, feels overly long, amongst a lot of other problems. I really don't want to talk about every single thing wrong in this film because it has many problems, but I'll go into what irritated me the most.

I'm going to start with this movies inability to remained focused on the story at hand and go into so many over dramatic subplots/Plot twists. We were meant to believe in the beginning that the story was going to be centered around Krasinski, his relationship to his family, and him trying to figure out who he is again. We are then diverted as we follow the story of how his fathers business is on the verge of bankruptcy, how his brother is going through a terrible break up, how his brother is trying to get his kids back, how their nurse marries Krasinski's old girlfriend, how the marriage between Krasinski's mom and dad is failing, and at least four or five other story lines that don't directly involve Krasinski. With all of these stories packed into a movie that is like an hour and a half long it makes the movie choppy, doesn't give us satisfying conclusions or storylines for any of them, and makes the movie feel like it's an hour longer than it really is. You can really see how hard Krasinski is trying to make a good movie and possibly even an oscar picture, but it just doesn't work out that way in the end. I think if you were to cut out at least 20-30 minutes of footage you'd have more of a compelling movie.

Another thing that annoyed me was every single male character in this movie except for Krasinski as they felt unreal in a movie that deals with a pretty serious subject and their just to try to get some laughs. The two characters I had the most trouble with were Ron (played by Copley) and Don (Jenkins) who play Krasinski's Brother and Father. The character of Ron almost seems like a cut and paste copy of Michael Scott from The Office. They dress Copley's character almost exactly like Steve Carrell, the character deals with certain situations in ways that Mcihael Scott would handle it, and even his dialogue is similar to the way Michael Scott would talk. The scenes with Krasinski and Copley reminded me of certain episodes of The Office. It almost seems like this role was meant for Steve Carrell and I think it would've been a lot better if it was for him. Copley has really bad comedic delivery, a terrible american southern accent, and has a lot of trouble staying real in all his scenes.

The same could be said about Jenkins who cries in literally almost every scene he is in. The character cries so much that the moments of sadness don't feel deserved or real because of the amount of time this character spends crying. Their is even one scene towards the point of climax for the film where it would makes sense for Jenkin's character to cry, but he doesn't. I don't know if it was written in for him to constantly cry, if he was given that direction, or if it was his choice, but it was a poor decision.

Also that thing I said before about great chemistry. The chemistry is only great when the focus is on two characters. When it becomes like a scene that's an ensemble it becomes a mess. Too many of the actors are actaully over talking each other and no one really gets their chance to shine as Krasinski doesn't know which characters to focus on so it just becomes a bit of a mess.

The Humor also need to be reworked as their were a lot of times that they were trying to go for some laughs and a lot of times it didn't work at all.

Overall I was really disappointed with this movie and don't recommend you go see it.