Review of Trumbo (2015) by Ben L — 24 Feb 2016

Trumbo is a biopic about a fascinating person who did some fascinating things, but the film tries to do too much so it becomes difficult to really explore his life as I was hoping. If you don't know, Dalton Trumbo was a very popular screenwriter who was blacklisted because he was a Communist. Despite the fact that Hollywood forbid him from writing, he continued to do uncredited work. This behind-the-scenes work led to a number of awards that he couldn't admit to winning, and that was the best part of the film. However this movie decided to be about every aspect of his life during this time, so we also have to see a number of scenes about rifts in his family and fights with his friends. Because there was so much going on, some plot threads would get sown up too quickly which made it unconvincing. I also found it strangely hypocritical that a film, which focuses on the injustice of criminalizing thought, makes really obvious villains out of people like Hedda Hopper and John Wayne for exercising their own right to free speech.

Speaking of Hedda Hopper and John Wayne, I was surprised at the casting in this film. It's always tough when you cast one actor to play another (extremely famous) actor, but I thought they did pretty well. It didn't feel too much like they were doing cheesy impersonations, but instead they just captured the essence of the actors. Your mileage may vary though, because some people might desire a more on-the-nose impersonation and find these to be lackluster. Honestly, the performance that I found most distracting was Bryan Cranston in the lead. It's not really his fault, but the voice he gives Trumbo is basically identical to the voice he used playing a character on How I Met Your Mother, so I struggled to keep a straight face in several scenes that should have been much more serious. It's a shame because I think Dalton Trumbo was an extremely interesting person, but he wasn't given a feature film that brought that out. The sad part is, in the story of a truly brilliant screenwriter, I think it is the screenwriters who kind of dropped the ball.