This is more like an extended Saturday Night Live skit than anything else. That is, the depth, if any, comes from the actors trying to riff on their characters' basic premises while something weird happens off- stage. This movie almost succeeds because of the different depictions of how people deal with a crisis, but comes up short because of the shallowness of the depictions. The funniest parts are the ones that deal with the tension between personal and general crises. But I can't say that the movie is funny because it relies on the absurdity of the situation to generate automatic humor without actually exploring it.
Unfortunately, the acting is not that great and the characters are not that interesting. These are regular suburban types as filtered and parodied by the film & TV industry for decades, and they don't get much beyond their stereotypes. Shallow. Awkward. Irritating. Even the revelations about their characters make them types instead of people. But we don't get much else other than the attempted humor of how vacuous these people are, and how we are supposed to point and laugh at them for being that way. This only goes so far, and extending it for 1.5 hours is too much to take.
I like "closed room" movies because of how the characters are forced to interact with each other and reveal themselves (see "Key Largo" or "The Breakfast Club"), and many give us metaphors for the ways in which we box ourselves in. No doubt the people who made this film think it's a success if someone finds it shallow, awkward, and irritating, because that usually means it's funny. But it wasn't funny enough to overcome the irritation, and I think this was a missed opportunity to do something a heck of a lot better.
Unfortunately, the acting is not that great and the characters are not that interesting. These are regular suburban types as filtered and parodied by the film & TV industry for decades, and they don't get much beyond their stereotypes. Shallow. Awkward. Irritating. Even the revelations about their characters make them types instead of people. But we don't get much else other than the attempted humor of how vacuous these people are, and how we are supposed to point and laugh at them for being that way. This only goes so far, and extending it for 1.5 hours is too much to take.
I like "closed room" movies because of how the characters are forced to interact with each other and reveal themselves (see "Key Largo" or "The Breakfast Club"), and many give us metaphors for the ways in which we box ourselves in. No doubt the people who made this film think it's a success if someone finds it shallow, awkward, and irritating, because that usually means it's funny. But it wasn't funny enough to overcome the irritation, and I think this was a missed opportunity to do something a heck of a lot better.