From its title to the characters to the "story", "Let Them All Talk" is so forgettable, your mind flushes it away before the damn thing has even finished. With a handful of scenes actually scripted by Deborah Eisenberg--and a basic plot conceived by director Steven Soderbergh--Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen are encouraged to wing it for almost 2hrs--the movie is 70% improvisational. So, what we get from these talented actresses is a lot of stammering and stuttering...the movie plays like Woody Allen on Valium. Streep is a pompous, self-absorbed Pulitzer Prize-winning author sailing to the UK on the Queen Mary 2 to accept an award; she's been granted three guest tickets by her publisher, and has invited her nephew plus two estranged girlfriends from her college days--two women whom she hasn't had much contact with in 50 years. Wiest is a down-to-earth straight-shooter while Bergen has an axe to grind; seems Streep used Bergen's life story for one of her most celebrated novels without asking her friend's permission. There are compensations here for the overall lack of drive and energy: the movie (a video-on-demand release) was actually filmed at sea, with paying guests used as extras; Streep and Bergen have one terrific scene together near the end; and Wiest has lost none of her intrinsic savvy. What was Soderbergh trying to capture here? A character portrait so raw and "real" that the actors themselves make up the movie's trajectory? ** from ****
