Morgan Freeman And Greg Kinnear Sell The Rushed/Slow Feast Of Love Well!

The Good: Acting, Characters, Dialogue
The Bad: Pacing!, Abrupt resolutions
The Basics: Good acting and interesting characters make up for a film that seems to gloss over some meaningful moments in the story.


These days, it seems that most of the movies I take in on DVD I find by watching other movies on DVD. That was the way I found Feast Of Love, a film that sold me from the previews I saw when watching another film. After all, director Robert Benton did not grab me with the last movie of his I saw: he wrote The Ice Harvest (reviewed here!). But the preview of Feast Of Love looked too good to pass up and so I decided to give it a spin.

Largely, I enjoyed the movie and my "recommend" is much more firm than my rating. I enjoyed Feast Of Love, which is a rather able romantic drama, but it suffers in too many places from being a movie. Romance in films is rushed and though I might seem biased as I am not usually a fan of voice-overs, the voice-overs from Morgan Freeman's Harry Stevenson at the end of the movie are just plain terrible. Instead of taking time to illustrate key scenes, they are simply told to the viewer and this is an unfortunate conceit in a movie where relationships come together and fall apart (television, on the other hand, tends to have enough time to breathe and thus makes for a much better medium for realistic romance stories).

The wise college professor Harry Stevenson is on sabbatical following the death of his son, which has left him somewhat estranged from his wife, Esther. He has taken to spending his days wandering, observing and hanging out at Bradley Smith's coffee bar. Harry and Bradley are friends and they end up watching one of Kathryn's - Bradley's wife - softball games and afterward, Harry observes Kathryn falling in love with a woman from the visiting team. As Bradley's marriage falls apart, young ex-junkie Oscar falls in love at first sight with Chloe, who easily reciprocates his love.

As Oscar and Chloe struggle to pay the rent and grow their love, while avoiding Oscar's psychotic, alcoholic father, Bradley begins a romantic relationship with his realtor, Diana. Diana, who has been sustaining an affair with a married man, provides a real chance for Bradley to find love and happiness, despite the fact that the pair has moved into a house that seems to have been the downfall of several romantic relationships (conveniently this puts Bradley right next door to Harry).

Unfortunately, the trailer has key lines in it that indicate exactly how Bradley's relationship with Diana ends, but I shall not repeat them here. D'oh! Okay, so his relationship with Diana ends and, unfortunately for the flow of the film, the woman who next enters Bradley's life is given such a truncated appearance that the relationship is never truly believable. And that's the serious drawback throughout much of Feast Of Love. I like movies that have big casts, a lot of characters to keep track of and stories that interweave. I can live with that. In Feast Of Love, there are essentially three couples (Harry/Esther, Oscar/Chloe, and Bradley and whomever he is with at the time) and most of the time is spent on Bradley and his romantic flailings.

The problem is Bradley's two post-Kathryn relationships both appear to be missing pretty significant chunks to them and the viewer feels a bit jerked around by the absence of the scenes of important growth for the character and his romantic self. Cheating that with the voice-over near the end just feels cheap.

This is not to say that Feast Of Love is bad; it's not, but the pacing is seriously off. Actually, one of the nicest things about the movie comes in the character of Harry. Harry is presented as an erudite, solid character who could be one of the Greek Gods he speaks of in the opening monologue, he is that great. Portrayed by Morgan Freeman, Harry instantly connotes a wizened, credible professor. But the genius of how Harry is presented is that he is not omnipotent. The reason so many smart people need therapy is because we (humans) all have blind spots. We may be exceptional in some areas, but in the areas that hit us most deeply, we often cannot see straight. Harry, who is presented as easily the smartest character - both in terms of reason and emotions - has a huge blind spot and his friendship with the young Chloe finally exposes that blind spot to him. His character arc is one of the most subtle and deepest in the entire movie.

The most obvious arcs come from Bradley, who has far more obvious blind spots. Bradley wants to believe in love so much that he doesn't see what is, he idealizes his relationships instead. So, for example, when he takes Kathryn to a kennel to see dogs, he becomes convinced that she is over her hatred of dogs because she tolerated one of the dogs she saw there. That type of naive blindness is difficult to watch, but essentially human and works wonderfully for viewers to empathize with Bradley. Of course, half the time, we are simply frustrated by how Bradley doesn't get it, but it works.

Bradley is played by Greg Kinnear and he is the perfect everyman for the role. Kinnear has the ability to slouch slightly to connote deep emotional wounds in his character even before he begins to speak. And when Bradley is in love and believes everything in his life is fine (blinders firmly attached) Kinnear holds himself up with a confidence that seems perfectly natural and real.

The cast is rounded out with performances by Selma Blair (Kathryn), Jane Alexander (Esther), and Fred Ward (Oscar's father, Bat). But for a change it is young actors who made me truly appreciate their characters: Alexa Davalos as Chloe and Toby Hemingway as Oscar. First, the pair has great on-screen chemistry. From the first moment Davalos appears on screen, there is no doubt in the viewer's mind that her character wants exactly what Oscar wants and Davalos manages this without speaking. Second, each actor is fearless in their portrayals. Hemingway has the look of an ex-junkie in this, but he manages to make the audience believe fully that he has put that life behind him. As for Davalos, a quick trip over to the IMDB revealed to me that this was not the first thing I had seen her in, so I have to say that I was impressed by how she played scared. Davalos had very tough roles in Angel and The Chronicles Of Riddick (reviewed here!) and I never made the association with her often terrified and very young-seeming character in Feast Of Love. Truly, this is her master performance.

On DVD, Feast Of Love the film looks and sounds good, but it comes with no real bonus features. There are cast biographies of the players, but that's it. This is pretty disappointing for a film of this caliber. In general, this is a worthwhile drama likely to satisfy most.

For other films featuring Morgan Freeman, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Rises
Invictus
The Dark Knight
Wanted
Lucky Number Slevin
March Of The Penguins
War Of The Worlds
Batman Begins
Million Dollar Baby
Dreamcatcher
Unforgiven
Driving Miss Daisy

7/10

Check out how this film stacks up against others I have reviewed by visiting my Movie Review Index Page where the works are organized from best to worst!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Reality (Again) Leaves Me Less Than Impressed With Kramer Vs. Kramer.

The Good: Acting, Characters, DVD bonus features
The Bad: Plot, Oppressive mood
The Basics: A decent film, Kramer Vs. Kramer is a bit more dated than revealing now and given how common divorce and custody battles are, sadly depicts the norm.


"They" say, frequently, that you can't please everyone and I know I am guilty of that almost constantly. I kvetch about dramatic conventions and how utterly annoying Hollywood body types are in movies and how ridiculous it is that realistic people are seldom portrayed having real problems in movies. And I constantly rail about how characters in films always seem to have enough money or live in places that look unrealistic for what their means actually are. But, given real people fighting like in The Story Of Us (reviewed here!) or a poor person surrounded by her rich friends in Friends With Money, I just kvetch kvetch kvetch about how the movies are not entertaining and that for those who live poor or have heard parents fight for weeks at a time, this is not worth watching. I have come to the same place with Kramer Vs. Kramer.

In the case of Kramer Vs. Kramer, I am able to more enthusiastically recommend the film than I am able to sell readers on why they might want to watch the movie. The reason, as cliche as it is, is that with the prevalence of divorce in the United States, Kramer Vs. Kramer is more dated and while I can appreciate the performances and I actually liked a few of the characters, most of the movie plods along in a rut which many of us have far too much experience with. Ironically, it took for me writing this to recall that not only am I the child of divorce, but I've been divorced myself (there were no children involved in my divorce). The power of Kramer Vs. Kramer was that while I've experienced divorce as the person being abandoned, the film makes the child, Billy Kramer, so much the focus that his is the story viewers empathize with most. Watching Kramer Vs. Kramer put me back in that mindset, that of a child watching parents divorcing, so effectively that it was only when I began analyzing the film that I recalled that divorce was not just something that happened to my parents. That is admittedly powerful for a film to do.

On the day that he lands a big account at the advertising agency he works for and what should be one of the best days of his life, Ted Kramer returns home to find his wife leaving him. When Joanna walks out on them, Ted and Billy (their six year-old) must learn to live with one another and Ted, who is used to putting in long hours and focusing on his career, quickly finds himself overwhelmed by raising the child and working at the office. Ted gets an unlikely ally, though, in his neighbor - one of Joanna's former friends - Margaret, who helps him navigate his divorce and raising Billy.

But after fifteen months, Joanna returns to New York City and watches Ted and Billy. In that time, she decides to sue for custody, shortly after Billy takes a fall from a jungle gym which requires him to get stitches. At the worst possible time, Ted loses his job and must struggle to maintain custody, even though all of the system seems predisposed toward granting Joanna custody.

Kramer Vs. Kramer is a refreshingly direct drama and one of the shortest movies to win the Best Picture Oscar. Right away, the two essential conflicts in the film are established: the relationship conflict and the career conflict and those are, essentially, the only two stories that are developed and carried through to the end. But the truth is, viewers will be largely unsurprised by either aspect, given how they are established. Almost immediately, Joanna leaves, so this forces Ted to step up and become the father he had not been before. It is unsurprising that he rises to the occasion, because if he did not, the subsequent conflict between Ted and Joanna over Billy's custody would not be at all vital. In the process, Ted must decide which is more important, his career or raising his son well. This, too, is an unsurprising character arc and direction for the film, though it does make Ted a more likable character.

The timeless aspect of Kramer Vs. Kramer comes in the character traits (because it is certainly not coming through in the costumes, like the big-'70's glasses worn by one of the characters!) which are admittedly more complicated than in most dramas. Ted is not a monolithically good father and while the audience does not truly come to like Joanna ever, it is hard to characterize her as a villain. But Ted has very real human emotions: he gets frustrated, he throws a glass at the wall, he yells at Billy when Billy does age-appropriate boundary testing. But he also has a very clear and full love for Billy and Joanna. And Ted works hard to provide. In fact, one of the most subtle, best aspects of the character arcs are two breakfasts with Ted and Billy where they make French toast together: the two scenes show clear growth and development in both characters and that is pretty much the best one can ask for from a film on the character front.

But the plot is very dated, save on the issue of custody. The courts still favor the mother in this aspect (I guess this helps make up for the Glass Ceiling, sexual harassment and disproportionately high violent crime victim rates - you can be battered, harassed at work and underpaid, but the courts will let you have your kids more often than not), but the traumatizing nature of divorce and custody arrangements is not such a big deal. For all of the people who scream about the scourge of divorce and "broken homes," like it or not, with divorce rates over fifty percent, this is more the norm than the extraordinary in the United States.

Which brings me back to my original lines. We live it, why do we want to watch it as a movie to escape from all that? The answer is, we do not. Kramer Vs. Kramer is solidly emotional and entertaining (in its way), but it is hardly a film one wants to sit and watch and rewatch. This is a film that highlights (well) a social problem - that the courts are so predisposed toward mothers in custody hearings - by illustrating a hard-working father who comes to learn all of the right messages only to have his status as legal guardian threatened.

Usually, I write about the acting, but the movie stars Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep; that the acting is somewhere between good and extraordinary is pretty much a given. Such is the case in Kramer Vs. Kramer. The two performers who never seem to get enough credit for the film, though, are Justin Henry as Billy and Jane Alexander as Margaret. Alexander holds her own with Hoffman for screen presence and having seen Hoffman in other works, that is no easy task. Alexander is emotional and articulate and makes great use of the few scenes she is in. But, for a change, a child actor comes through. Justin Henry steals his scenes as Billy by emotionally delivering his lines. When Billy falls off the jungle gym, Henry's wailing is so realistic one would actually think he had torn open his head. In fact, one of the best performances by a child actor ever would have to be when Billy is having stitches put in.

On DVD, Kramer Vs. Kramer arrives with minimal - but adequate - bonus features. The DVD has the original theatrical trailers, but no commentary track. There is a documentary which is thorough enough to make up for the lack of a commentary track, though. It is also worth noting that Kramer Vs. Kramer is erratically transferred to DVD. For example, when Ted is walking down the street in the middle of the film, while on his job hunt, the film quality becomes decidedly more grainy. Even so, most of the film looks good.

Kramer Vs. Kramer is a good drama, but it is likely to be real enough for an experience many people already have that it will seem redundant.

[As a winner of the Best Picture Oscar, this is part of my Best Picture Project, online here! Please check it out!]

For other dramas, please visit my reviews of:
Magnolia
A Family Thing
Character

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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