The Good Life (2007/Image DVD)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C
So many
indie films have tried to make “the big statement” since American Beauty was a big critical and commercial hit that it
helped to kill such filmmaking to the point that the major studios folded their
specialty arms. Steve Barra’s The Good Life (2007) is yet another
look at life as bad, with a young man (Mark Webber in a good performance)
relaying to us how bad and miserable it has been to grow up in his small town with
no hope, a dysfunctional family, few friends and even a bully (Chris Klein in
one of his few real acting performances, for how little he is on screen) that
just makes this palpable, but at the same time unrealistic and predictable.
The
constant voice over is not half the problem, but other choices that really
pull away from the suspension of
disbelief and makes it more like an indie formula package deal than anything
convincing. Zooey Deschanel is the
would-be girlfriend who is likable, but when this idea is reintroduced that she
is the indie version of Judy Garland, this all sadly implodes. It was bad enough that we get a set up where
a local movie theater owner and film fan (Bill Paxton) is booking classics with
Garland among others in an awkward variant of Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), but the
film makes the same numerous, tired film/pop culture references that have
killed original thinking in filmmaking.
Harry
Dean Stanton is a welcome plus to the cast, as is Patrick Fugit, who is hardly
in the film in one of its other big mistakes.
By the time this is all over, the film cops out of making any point,
having any edge, making any statement and rings very phony considering the
promise of a hard look at life that is set up in the beginning. That’s a shame, because this looked very
promising, but in the end, writes too many checks it’s you know what can’t
cash.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image is on the soft
side, though Director of Photography Patrice Lucien Cochet has some good
moments of composition and I wondered how much better this stylized shot would
be on a film print or Blu-ray. Video
Black is weak and colors are toned down to a fault. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is really
dialogue-based towards the front and rarely comes alive. The only extra is a trailer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
