SCORE- 7/10

Plot Synopsis (OBJECTIVE): A young couple travels North America in search of a new home for themselves, but more importantly, for their unborn baby girl as they experience many self-reflecting moments along the way.

Plot Synopsis (SUBJECTIVE): Two thirty-something-year old pseudo hipsters travel to random cities across North America at the harmonious pace of Nick Drake-ish wrist-slitting guitar music. A pussy’s whisper and an F-minor chord later, we meet all sorts of characters who are obviously written to conflict with the main characters, influencing the couple’s decisions on where they will eventually settle down. Can’t guess the end? 

Juno meets Elizabethtown, at best. Garden State in its 30s, at worst.

BC- So I gave it a 7…7s are really rare for me, believe it or not. What that means to me is that it COULD have been a really good movie (an 8), and it wasn’t necessarily that it was bad, but, it just wasn’t flawed enough to be a 6, nor solid enough to be an 8. Those are very rare. It’s almost as though movies that receive a 7 in my book are actually special; maybe just for that they should be 10s. No? Ok.

Sam Mendes directed this film. For those of you who don’t know who that man is…look him up (click the link with his name on it, duh). Two of his films got a 10 rating from me: American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, so you would assume I would be easy to sway, why with his handsome beard and meticulosity, who wouldn’t be forced to give a work of his any thing less than a 10? But I don’t think he was himself here. I strongly believe that an artist’s greatest work is his most honest. Instead, he tried to do something here, that although it can be considered admirable (switching his style up), it falls short of a half-truth. A joke that he knew was really funny but didn’t dictate it well enough to prove its genius. He has more than proven himself with marital conflicts and intense family issues, but, he needs to work on his ‘so what if i’ve made major hollywood dramas, I can still kick the shit out of a USC film grad’s first Indie feature’ attitude and just be real. This movie felt like many other ‘coming of age’ indie flicks. There are actually shots in the film that you could swear you’ve seen it in many other movies and what’s great about this one is that since there is not a whole lot of action going on throughout, you actually have time to remember what movie it was you recognized that shot from.