The Dinner (15.)
Directed by Oren Moverman.
Starring Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Rebecca Hall, Charlie Plummer and Chloe Sevigny. 120 mins.
Beware the wonderful starter; it is invariably the prelude to a disappointing main. This Dinner is a gathering of US senator Gere, his spectacularly charmless brother Coogan and their respective spouses, Hall and Linney, in a very fancy restaurant. This is a dinner where we watch to find out what is eating them, and for around 50 minutes that is quite intriguing. What is the important issue Gere wants to discuss? What is the relevance of the flashback sequences with their children? Why does anybody put up with Coogan's spectacular rudeness? When the mains arrive, and almost everybody leaves the table, it's the point when you realise that this is going to a very long and very pointless dinner engagement.
A big part of the problem is with Coogan's role as the permanently angry and frustrated history teacher, though how much this is down to the writing or the performance is hard to say. Coogan is a master impersonator but his American accent is consistently jarring, you are always aware of the effort it is taking. At points, you think he may be trying to give a little Woody Allen spin to his lines. Quite early on viewers click that his character has some form of mental illness. But none of that prevents his constant urge to find confrontation any easier to take. There's a sense of betrayal when it becomes clear that Gere's character isn't about to take centre stage, that within this ensemble Coogan is our main character.
At one point Gere commands that nobody leaves the table, before then leaving the table himself. It's a moment that really chimes with viewers tired of the constant interruptions and flashbacks. As the characters yack on at each other you wonder what was so great about the play this was adapted from. Afterward, I discovered that it was adapted from a best selling Dutch book, a page turner described as the European Gone Girl, which was my head spun right there. You'd really never have guessed. Which is a measure of the film's total failure. Because you can see that there is interesting stuff buried here, proper meat rather than the thin morsels we're presented with. There are potential fascinating themes about humanity's propensity for war, but it gets lost in conversation. This is not a drama, it's a filibuster.
Directed by Oren Moverman.
Starring Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney, Rebecca Hall, Charlie Plummer and Chloe Sevigny. 120 mins.
Beware the wonderful starter; it is invariably the prelude to a disappointing main. This Dinner is a gathering of US senator Gere, his spectacularly charmless brother Coogan and their respective spouses, Hall and Linney, in a very fancy restaurant. This is a dinner where we watch to find out what is eating them, and for around 50 minutes that is quite intriguing. What is the important issue Gere wants to discuss? What is the relevance of the flashback sequences with their children? Why does anybody put up with Coogan's spectacular rudeness? When the mains arrive, and almost everybody leaves the table, it's the point when you realise that this is going to a very long and very pointless dinner engagement.
A big part of the problem is with Coogan's role as the permanently angry and frustrated history teacher, though how much this is down to the writing or the performance is hard to say. Coogan is a master impersonator but his American accent is consistently jarring, you are always aware of the effort it is taking. At points, you think he may be trying to give a little Woody Allen spin to his lines. Quite early on viewers click that his character has some form of mental illness. But none of that prevents his constant urge to find confrontation any easier to take. There's a sense of betrayal when it becomes clear that Gere's character isn't about to take centre stage, that within this ensemble Coogan is our main character.
At one point Gere commands that nobody leaves the table, before then leaving the table himself. It's a moment that really chimes with viewers tired of the constant interruptions and flashbacks. As the characters yack on at each other you wonder what was so great about the play this was adapted from. Afterward, I discovered that it was adapted from a best selling Dutch book, a page turner described as the European Gone Girl, which was my head spun right there. You'd really never have guessed. Which is a measure of the film's total failure. Because you can see that there is interesting stuff buried here, proper meat rather than the thin morsels we're presented with. There are potential fascinating themes about humanity's propensity for war, but it gets lost in conversation. This is not a drama, it's a filibuster.
