Errata
Via Chicago
—• CONTENTS •—
— Errata Movie Podcast —
2003, Australia
director: Sue Brooks

I admit that I lost patience with this movie very early on. Sandy, played by Toni Collette, is constantly exasperated. She rolls her eyes, sighs, and throws up her hands in scene after scene. It's her standard response to the slightest imposition. It's a wonder she has any friends at all. Even less likable is the walking stereotype of a Japanese businessman who she's supposed to escort through the desert. If I'd been a little more patient with its annoying characters and their limited problem solving abilities, I think the preposterous contrivance that follows the setup still would have lost me, or the one after it. If neither of those had done it, then certainly the final one would have, the one that's supposed to carry the last lethargic half hour, when the music kicks in and we're expected to give this movie and its selfish characters an emotional validation that's entirely unearned.

Japanese Story elides character development that it can't credibly display, and I can't begin to guess how Collette mustered such a performance for a movie so obviously beneath her talents.

Posted by davis | Link