Ron’s Review

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This was awful. Whatever little of Linklater I have seen has been bad. This is no better. The direction is so stilted, and catatonic. Characters, in this case, Ethan Hawke’s Larry Hart, drone on and on, monotonous and tedious. Makes one feel like jumping into the screen to tell him to shut up.

Worse, the dialogue is so repetitive. It’s presumably meant to simulate real-life conversation that goes back and forth and in circles. There’s a reason why film dialogue isn’t written and delivered like this—because it’s annoying and jarring.

But more than anything, the greatest flaw of this film is that it is so deadly dull and boring. When you base your entire film on correspondence between a pair of characters but decide to set it in one restaurant with limited room to manoeuvre, you give the audience nothing to work with. We aren’t watching a play; we’re watching a film. It’s like the director had no idea which medium he was working in.

I know Ethan Hawke is getting nominated for this role but it’s not his best work. It’s much too verbose for him to do any acting. He’s burdened with reams and reams of dialogue that he’s trying to deliver with the affectations of a bisexual man. It’s not a good look. Also, why not hire an actual short actor for this role?

Margaret Qualley brought some energy to this film and Andrew Scott tries hard with the see-sawing dialogue. But ultimately, this movie was terrible. I didn’t enjoy anything about it.

Mon’s Review

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Reluctantly watched this because of the awards buzz. I knew I wouldn’t care for it given my dislike of Linklater’s work. But I didn’t realize I’d find it tedious from the get-go.

Ethan Hawke is such a great actor, yet here he is terrible. His performance is too forced. Is it camp or an insult to the affectations of the real Larry Hart? To top it all, the oversized set design and obvious special effects needed to make the 5.10 and a half foot Hawke into a barely 5 ft Hart, adds further to the insult.

This was a man who suffered from many vices, and his legacy has been somewhat erased in light of his musical partner, Rodgers’, much more famous partnership with Hammerstein II. And this is the story we get for him? I’m trying to figure out what I’m missing. I understand the references, and the attempt at staging it all like we’re in a play, but it was turgid and tedious.

If Linklater was attempting to comment on how Hart’s sexuality has been white washed, he did a terrible job of harping on about Hart’s infatuation with the extremely young Elizabeth. All this can be true, and yet, as a story about a man undone by his demons, it does little but shine a spotlight on how leering these old men are. Elizabeth May be fully dressed, but she is highly sexualized by the dialogue. She’s hardly a person.

And yet, every time Margaret as Elizabeth is on screen, she brings a natural, vibrant energy that’s sorely lacking in Hawke’s forced performance. Bobby Cannavale is just himself as the bartender, filling in the role of Sascha from this film’s oft-quoted references to Casablanca. Even Andrew Scott seems a bit off. He has a permanent look of disdain and disgust when around Hart, but keeps humouring him. Where’s the background to why?

This film is so busy applauding itself that it forgets there’s an actual story to tell about a person and people that not everyone is familiar with.