Feast of Love Review

by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)
October 2nd, 2007

Feast of Love (2007)
A movie review by Jonathan Moya
Rating C+

The Review:

Any movie that has a folksy narrator that pretends to hang back and be a disinterested party should always have a scene where the wise voice trundles a less aware character and tells him to stop the nonsense. That would save most movies at least thirty minutes of boring plot involvement.

In Feast of Love Morgan Freeman gets shackled with the nonessential essential chore, the dispenser of kindly wisdom, the mutterer of the eternal theme. Freeman having played God in Bruce and Evan Almighty has a stranglehold on these kinds of role. And he has plenty to do here- because Feast of Love loves to spell out its points in capital letters and exclamation marks.

"There was a story about the Greek gods" God/Freeman speaks, watching mere mortal women play the eternal game of life known as baseball. Bottom of the ninth, one run behind, two outs, one on first and Kathryn (the in and out so quickly Selma Blair) at bat. Her face a grimace of determination to whack the leather off the ball since polite society frowns on her using the bat to whack the life out of her dullard husband, Bradley (Greg Kinear, playing his usual wide eye innocent) who is oblivious to her real needs. "They were bored, so they invented human beings", God continues, but let's just call him Harry. Kathryn whacks the ball, and gets to second base. She is eyeing stealing third. The cute brunette at second gives her a sexy smile and tells her not to even think about it. "But they were still bored, so they invented love, " Harry muses. "Then they weren't bored any longer." The pitch flies and Kathryn heads for third. In the run down, Kathryn is smartly tagged out on her ass by the second base Cutie. "So they decided to try love for themselves." After the game, at the neighborhood bar, the brunette saddles next to her, and lovingly caresses her thigh underneath the table. Harry delivers a bemusing grin, taking it all in and noticing that Bradley is blissfully unaware. "And finally, they invented laughter. So they can stand it."

Bradley is a character that writers and directors love. His denseness allows for easy plot complications. And easy resolutions.

The instructions for his life seem to be written in Chinese and translated badly into English.

Bradley take wife to dog pound even though she hate dogs. When wife doesn't scream and even names mutt after him, he see as good sign. Brings dog home for wife as anniversary present. Wife scream. Say he is uncaring idiot. Wife leave him for girlfriend.

Bradley mourn two days. Screw real estate agent (Radha Mitchell) who already make love love with marry boyfriend one (Billy Burke). Since boyfriend one wont divorce wife one, girlfriend marry Bradley. Yet girlfriend still try to screw marry boyfriend. Marry boyfriend no screw her, because she marry. Marry boyfriend divorce. They meet in park. She learn he no marry no more. They screw. She leave Bradley. Bradley screwed again.

Bradley also own a coffee shop- Jitters- which is the main mood for most of the characters.

His barista Oscar (Toby Hemingway) is in love with the new girl Chloe (Alexa Davalos). Or as she says it Chlo-ah.

Toby has some serious bad life cards in his path, as a psychic moodily points out. The main one being his drunk and abusive father. The other is his and Chloe's continuous need to make love on the fifty yard line of the local college stadium.

Soon she is preggers and they are shacking together- enjoying what little good life they have before the other bad life cards trump.

In better times Robert Benton was a serious Academy Award winning director (Kramer vs. Kramer) and writer (Kramer and Places In the Heart). If he had written the screenplay he might have cracked the nut of multiple perspectives that gave the Charles Baxter novel its density. After all, Benton and Arthur Penn did issue in the American New Wave with Bonnie and Clyde. Here, Benton is just a hired gun following the studio line.
Allison Burnett, a writer of second rate romances (Autumn in New York) and body blow flicks (Blood Fist 3) is credited with the screenplay. His other produced work this year, Resurrecting the Champ, was a smart story of journalistic deceit and screw up that couldn't avoid a collapse into sentimentality despite a fine performance by Samuel L. Jackson.

Feast of Love suffers the same problem. It can't resist the urge to dumb itself down.

Benton does try to give it some seriousness by inserting some adult sex into the mix and drawing each character in his own color scheme. Bradley's is yellow. Harry's is red. Oscar and Chloe's are blue.

But everything is too thin and lightweight. The Feast of Love is eaten whole by its platitudes and stereotypes. It is not a feast. Not even a dessert. The Feast of Love is just an undercooked drama.

It gets a C+.

The Credits:

Directed by Robert Benton; written by Allison Burnett, based on the novel by Charles Baxter; director of photography, Kramer Morgenthau; edited by Andrew Mondshein; production designer, Missy Stewart; produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Richard S. Wright; released by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Running time: 102 minutes.

WITH: Morgan Freeman (Harry Stevenson), Greg Kinnear (Bradley), Radha Mitchell (Diana), Jane Alexander (Esther), Alexa Davalos (Chloe), Toby Hemingway (Oscar), Selma Blair (Kathryn), Stana Katic (Jenny), Billy Burke (David) and Fred Ward (Bat).

"Feast of Love" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has nudity, sexual situations and some strong language.

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