DON'T READ THIS.
@Brian_Gilgore was much more succinct. I just hated this enough to be inspired to write a full review:
1/10
I'm not even being a dick. It's really, really bad.
It's everything you hate about Louis. It's whiny, impotent, self-pitying and pretentious. It opts for maudlin sentimentality over humour EVERY time. Like the worst amateur films, it thinks it's smarter than the audience, but is filled with stupid decisions at every level -- the scene where Joe emotionally spirals in the kitchen after getting pants-ed playing volleyball has to be seen to be believed. It's mumblecore without any grassroots passion and too much ukulele score.
The entire purpose of this movie is to explore the complicated nature of family dynamics, yet rather than have the lead character's wife play a realistically consequential role, she stays home and his emotional sounding board is a bi-racial widow one of the cousins with barely any lines brought over for the weekend. It feels like a cheap cop-out every time this random character facilitates an emotional breakthrough. In fact, all the women are terribly written. They're just cunts (not the mulatto, of course, she's cute, pretty much rolls with anything and is happy to have her emotional baggage completely ignored). Meanwhile half the men in the film are weepy, introspective and emotionally nuanced.
Robert Walsh is terrible. Attempting to express suppressed malaise but ultimately looking like he's trying to hold in a shit the entire movie. It was too on the nose the first time, but there are literally between four and seven static shots of him in quiet agony.
The film is also too sheepish to actually do anything that might rattle the audience from the doldrums it creates. Early in the film Joe takes on Robert Kelly as an AA sponsee. Since Joe fails to realize the narcissistic nature of his family struggles, he overlooks his responsibilities as a sponsor. A more confident film might make the Robert character relapse, creating a significant and tangible consequence for Joe's behaviour. This film, however, has Robert pop up fatly in the back of a scene at a pizzeria -- he called Joe's wife to track him down because he's going crazy ova here! He hasn't actually drank and he forgives Joe immediately since "No one has every apologized to me before. Ever." and their subsequent conservation serves as the catalyst to solving all of Joe's problems. It's ABC Family level writing.
I have no idea why someone with an understanding and appreciation of film like Louis CK would make this. This film has nothing to say you haven't heard said before in better movies or even conversations overheard on the bus. This is a film that Joe List will like and I don't think they tried to make it enjoyable for anybody else.
