AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
(directed by John Wells, 2013)
*** (out of 5)
.
> Tracy Letts adapted the screenplay from his own stage play, a story about family dysfunction on the plains of Oklahoma.
. Patriarch Sam Shepard goes missing one day, and the family comes to comfort drug-addled cancer victim Meryl Streep in a big, showy performance as the intense, overbearing matriarch. There is some very good writing here, and it is a pleasure to watch all these actors at work, but, (THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS aside), I am not a big fan of the genre of “dysfunctional family drama”. People yelling at each other gets tiresome for me fast. Everybody here is damaged goods with major baggage, from a bitter, raging Julia Roberts battling estranged husband Ewen McGregor (wasted here), to a tormented Benedict Cumberbatch (excellent), embroiled in a tragic, illicit affair with (highly underrated actress) Julianne Nicholson, to a very good, very nasty Margo Martindale being read the riot act by fed-up husband Chris Cooper, (very good, as always- especially when, as a man of few words, he is called upon to say grace at a solemn occasion).
. A promising formula, yet there didn’t seem to be anything new here, and when it ended… it just ended.
– I guess August was over.
*
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