Look as hard as you like, but you'll never find The Road anywhere in the annals of great Christmas movies. Yet there we were, shunned from a sold-out screening of Sherlock Holmes, fresh from caroling and eating and opening the treasure trove of trinkets brought to us by Saint Nick. What better film could we have hoped for than a doom-soaked apocalyptic drama featuring starving people and the cannibals that love them?Despite its relentless message of hope amidst the worst of times and regardless of the day we watched it, it was hard not to get bogged down by the dreariness of The Road. Does the apocalypse have to be such a downer?
We're presented with a world turned upside-down. Millions are dead (we have no idea how many are left). Fox Mulder's claim to "trust no one" becomes the only words to live by. The overwhelmingly depressing outlook causes some to give up on life without a fight. The sun appears to be burning/burned out, leaving the landscape looking perennially like the Pacific Northwest (where, not coincidentally, suicide rates are high). And yet a father and his boy travel south down the eastern seaboard in search of...well, something. They're not quite sure, only positive that whatever is there (proximity to the equator? the ocean?) is better than their starting point.
I wasn't enamored with The Road. It's one of those movies that you might respect as being "artful" or "poignant" or even something as simple as "well-acted" or "artfully crafted," as it is all of those things and more. However, not only is it not an entertaining film - it's up there with the last half-hour of Requiem for a Dream on the Rollicking Good Time Scale of Theatrical Enjoyment - it covers a whole heck of a lot of ground that we've seen a lot of lately, and from better films. The desolate landscapes of 28 Days/Weeks Later, the realization of a human-less existence in Children of Men, and the cannibal fears of god knows how many horror films (and Ethan Hawke ones). On top of that, the mysterious nature of the book has also been translated to the film, so there's no explanation given as to why the world is the way that it is, and it's so bare in details that the characters don't even have names. What's left to take away is the reinforcement of something we already know about - the powerful bond between parent and child - and the importance of determination even in the face of the worst of circumstances. Point taken.
 | "Darn tootin!" |
| Shaky Cam Rating (details): | LAMBScore: |
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P.S. - Has anyone ever gotten more mileage out of two cameos (in a single year) than Guy Pearce in 2009?
