Review of This Must Be the Place (2011) by Dierregi — 09 Mar 2015

This is one of those movies that totally flat-lined for me. I watched it only because a friend liked and recommended it. However, I had serious doubts about it, after having read the synopsis and seen a photo of Sean Penn in drags. I am not a Penn fan, although I would not rule out a movie just because he is in it.

In this particular movie, I really disliked him for lots of reasons: the exasperating monotone of his speech; the phoniness of all his “conversations”; the weird and yet dull interaction with the many bizarre characters populating the movie, etc….

The word “boring” is used quite often when we explain why we did not like a movie. Basically, we did not feel emotionally or intellectually engaged by the story unfolding onscreen. Nothing works against this type of disengagement. No rational explanation will convince you about the deep, inner meaning the director, scriptwriter, actors and other reviewers saw or tried to instill into the story.

Therefore, for me this is the ultimate boring movie. A plot so thin I lost track of it after 10 minutes, totally disengaging and disengaged characters, far too much artsy Penn. I gave up, 1 hour and 6 minutes into it and I am not even sure why I lasted that long. By then, I still had no clue about what was going on and I definitely stopped caring even earlier …..