Review of This Must Be the Place (2011) by Terbo49 — 29 Dec 2012
Just a mess. This film feels like it was written by a class of stoned film students. Ideas are thrown together seemingly at random. The first part is set in Dublin, with Sean Penn playing Robert Smith.
Penn delivers all his lines as though he is watching a really good TV show and is very, very tired. That is ok for the first 10 minutes. France's McDormand doesn't even have to try to steal every scene, and the film gets worse when Penn and we leave her in Ireland and go to America.
There's a road journey to Texas, which has no point, a quest which has something to do wight the holocaust (rather insultingly) and wasted cameos by David Byrne and Harry Dean Stanton. None of the characters are there for any reason other than to contribute to banal, disjointed scenes which become quite boring.
One example - Penn drives through a puddle and drenches a uniformed marching band. He gets out and says he is sorry, although they should know he did it on purpose. This is the kind of scene that must seem like fun when you are high and desperate to come up with something, but when you string dozens of these scenes together, it's alienating, pointless, and a waste of the talent available.
This review of This Must Be the Place (2011) was written by Terbo49 on 29 Dec 2012.
This Must Be the Place has generally received positive reviews.
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