Review of Wristcutters: A Love Story (2007) by Sean W — 21 Jun 2011

Zia (Patrick Fugit) is suffering through a break-up when the film starts. His room's a mess and he plays the same record over and over. It's not long before he decides to shuffle lose his mortal coil. Unfortunately, suicides are taken to a place that's "like life, just worse." This consists of mostly desolate cities, where everything's a mess and everyone's an asshole. However, Zia learns that his ex, Desiree, has taken her own life too, and goes on a quest with his Russian friend, Eugene, to find her. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker by the name of Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), who believes she's been wrongfully placed there.

The premise of a select afterlife for suicides is an interesting one, but that's where anything of interest ends. The realization of it in this movie is piss poor. Desolate towns, and mostly barren landscapes with ruin scattered about is what it amounts to. The director has chosen to wash out the colors of this afterlife, and the effect makes everything look dull. We occasionally flash back to the real world, where everything looks normal, and I found myself hoping we would dwell in that for a bit, if only to get a break from the boring cinematography. Alas, that was not to be. This afterlife is truly a bore, and I wish the director would've spent more time on crafting a truly unique look for it, instead of just desaturating the hell out of it. The film's look is only the beginning of its problems though.

The story's not clever, it's not funny and it's not interesting. It's meant to be dark comedy, but the humor here is weak at best. All the jokes feel as if to say, "Look at this! It's so wrong and off-kilter that it's funny!" I'm really astonished as to how they hired the actors they did, which is the only saving grace of the film. Everyone should know Patrick Fugit from Almost Famous, and he does a good job of creating a real character in his movies. I've also always enjoyed Shannyn Sossamon, as she has a unique look and gives her characters some charm. There are others who pop up every now and again, like Jake Busey, Tom Waits and Will Arnett. I was left scratching my head as to why they were even here, but then I remembered these folks actually get paid for this.

Most of the movie are the three leads trekking around the desert in a car with a black hole under the passenger seat (yeah, there's a subplot that goes nowhere . . .). The third act mostly consists of a camp site hosted by Tom Waits character, Kneller. There's some talk of miracles, and PIC (People In Charge) and other things too boring to mention here.

Of course, Zia and Mikal fall for each other. Given that "love story" is in the subtitle, you'd think the story might spend some time on it. They don't save for one scene really. It's all boring. I think I'm running out of adjectives to describe how poor this movie is.

I'm curious to check out the short story, Kneller's Happy Campers. I'd like to believe that there was an interesting idea at the core of this piece of shit.