Review of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (2008) by Nick F — 20 Jun 2009

I really wanted to really like this, but it's hard for me to muster more than a "kind of" like it. I try hard not to be one of those people who compare plot points of a movie to those of its source material, hating the movie for being "too different." I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh and loved it. Where the movie version falters is not in that it is too different, it's just in how it is different. The movie follows a reluctant son-of-a-gangster, Art, during the summer following his college graduation where he meets and falls in love with first a woman, Jane, then a man, Cleveland. What the movie does wrong is decrease the number of characters so that Cleveland epitomizes character traits of two characters from the book. In the book, Art falls in love with a man (not Cleveland) who is a pretty good dude, making it make sense that he would fall in love with him. By making Art fall in love with Cleveland, who is pretty much an a-hole, in the movie, it just doesn't make sense to me, and they don't even lay hints that Art becomes slowly more interested in him. Again, it's not a gripe about faithfulness to the novel, but about good storytelling. With such an important part of the plot hinging on a romance that is questionable in its believability, the movie suffers greatly once it hits the 3rd act. All because of this stupid oversight of the script.

I will say, however, that it is super difficult not to develop a major crush on Sienna Miller (Jane) during this movie. She is absolutely adorable and turns in a good performance, as does Sarsgaard.