Reviews

With its frenetic pace and pseudo philosophical dialogue, this movie tries desperately to convince the audience that it has something to say. The result is that it is only occasionally coherent, both vapid and heavy handed, and fails to engage the viewer to sufficiently care about its banal third act.

Which is unfortunate since the visuals were interesting and the premise had potential.

This movie fails as a comedy, but could have succeeded with single change: make Ron sympathetic.

If Ron was truly well-meaning and just wanted to help others, the audience could laugh at the incongruity between his intentions and violent means.

Instead, the creators made Ron a self absorbed sociopath. The audience can only cringe at those he hurts, and question why anyone tolerates him for any amount of time.

There are two central plots to this movie: the girls vacation, and the plan to blow up the festival. Both are treated as farce, which gives this a hat on the hat problem. To have both work, one of the plots needed to be played straight. By having both plots goofy, the punchlines of both are weakened.

The more pressing flaw in the movie is that both plots are mediocre. The dialogue is weak all around, and none of the characters is believable.

This movie had potential in the characters of Barb and Star in a fish-out-of-water type movie (a lá Cedar Rapids). However, we are left with this bloated, dull affair. I ended up fast forwarding through most of the third act.

I was going to rate this movie only one star, but added one for the irony of a story about two guys painting traffic lines that is as interesting as watching paint dry. Well played.

Prince Avalanche makes no attempt to make any statement about relationships, friendship, work-life, or life in general. Moreover, it makes no attempt at interesting dialogue or action. Simply put, there is no discernible reason to watch this movie except to watch two dudes talk about nothing in particular.

IMDb requires that I write 10 lines of text, but doing so is more than this movie warrants. I will therefore simply add that this might be a satire of an independent movie.

This is the worst movie I've ever seen, and I typically enjoy movies of this nature (slower, deliberate about emotional development). I'll break it down:

Dialogue - This bothered me most and was the most distracting. It was completely stilted and lacked any flow.

Characters - Totally unsympathetic people. Generally underdeveloped.

Plot - Post college malaise is ripe with potential for a story, yet it feels as if it is only used as a plot device to introduce the pathetic characters and their terrible dialogue.

Nothing in the movie is particular funny, but it is a bit pretentious, making this movie completely unwatchable.

On a side note, I have never seen Girls, but after this drivel, I hope I never do.