Eat Pray Love (2010)

Film: Eat Pray Love (2010)

Stars: Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup, Javier Bardem

Director: Ryan Murphy

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In Notting Hill, there's a memorable scene (possibly the best scene) of Julia Roberts saying "one day, my looks will go, they will discover I can't act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while."  In real life, Roberts got a happy ending (and her looks will likely never go-movie star beauty has more endurance than us mere mortals), marrying her husband of 20+ years Danny Moder in 2002.  But her career would never have the same sort of sparkle that it did in the years after her unmatched 1997-2002 run.  Roberts would get $25 million for Mona Lisa Smile in 2003, but the film didn't live up to the giant grosses of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, and she would spend much of the next two decades alternating between forgettable mid-sized vehicles (Larry Crowne, Duplicity, Mother's Day, Money Monster), and attempts at prestige that went nowhere for her in terms of a return to the Oscars (Charlie Wilson's War, Secret in Their Eyes, and the best of her films/performances during this era, Closer).  While she did get an Oscar nomination in 2013 (for August: Osage County), Roberts, at one point the biggest star in the world, had to resort to category fraud to secure her nomination since it was felt she couldn't compete with costar Meryl Streep, an actress in a different lane than her in the 1990's, but by 2013 Streep had become a far more consistent box office presence.  Just two live-action films during this era can be called "true" hits, ones that would have fit in with her 1990's runs, both out in 2010-the much-maligned Valentine's Day, and our final movie with Roberts, Eat Pray Love, which would set off enormous conversation about the film itself, and would become shorthand for a specific type of "rich white woman finding herself" motif in the years that followed.

(Spoilers Ahead) Eat Pray Love is about the spiritual awakening of Liz Gilbert (a real-life journalist played by Roberts) who decides that the unrest she feels in her marriage to Stephen (Crudup) is too much, and as part of the divorce (and a recent breakup with an actor, played by Franco), she leaves her life in New York City, upending herself financially, and moves to a series of destinations (Italy, India, & Indonesia) where she can try to find meaning in her life.  In these places, she finds friendship, life, adventure, experiences, and food (so, so much food), but until Bali, when she finally opens herself up to a man named Felipe (Bardem), she doesn't admit that what she needs is a willingness to take a risk again, to feel open with another person.  In doing so, and getting married to Felipe, she finally resets the clock, and lives more fully.

You'll notice that I didn't write as much about the plot of Eat Pray Love as I normally do in these reviews, and there's a reason for that-for a film that is 140 minutes long, not a lot really happens.  Sometimes this isn't a bad thing-there are moments in this that are just about watching the simple pleasures of life like a thoughtful meditation or eating a plate of pasta with friends, that gives you a sense of what Liz is trying to get out of this travel.  As someone who is going to go on a trip to Europe in a few weeks (and am, like Liz, both really hopeful that it will give me some new perspectives as well as honestly terrified about taking a leap, by myself, into a place I don't know and into locales where I don't speak the languages), I can understand this.  One of the hallmarks of Eat Pray Love was that it did market a sort of romance about travel that you still see today in lifestyle shows on Netflix and Food Network.  The movie frequently plays with the concept of "cultural appropriation" without really acknowledging that as a concept, but it also does so in a way that at least feels celebratory of those cultures...this is truly about trying to learn about yourself by seeing (and respecting the world).  Liz does not pretend she is an expert in the lives of any of the people she meets, just that she's better for having met them...which feels less like cultural appropriation to me (which this movie has been accused of) and more like cultural appreciation, which I think is a fairer categorization.

But the movie doesn't have much to do beyond that, and in being so long (and in making Liz's journey so central to the story) it falls flat.  Roberts, in her early forties here, looks and acts as beautiful-as-ever, radiant in every moment, but no one else matches that charisma (including the dialogue).  In a sea of potential leading man, neither Franco, Crudup, nor Bardem seem worthy of Roberts herself (even if they might be good enough for the less impressive Liz, who is unusually indecisive for a woman headed into the fifth decade of her life).  Not even a short part for Viola Davis (just off her first Oscar nomination and about to become a movie star in her own right) makes much of a difference here.  The film looks great (putting 3-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson behind the camera can have that effect), but it's empty when you think about it for longer than a minute.

Roberts, as you will know, is still working.  In 2022, she starred in her first non-ensemble romantic comedy since 2011 with George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise (another movie that looks great but needed a much better script), and will be taking on her most interesting-looking role in years in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt later this fall.  What's in store is a question mark for an actress that perpetually redefines herself (even though she'll always be the exact same Julia Roberts to some audiences, that twinkling waitress they fell for in Mystic Pizza).  Next month, we're going to conclude our sixth season with the woman that spent all of the 1990's as Roberts' chief rival for the title of America's Sweetheart, one whom the media was far kinder too, but unlike Roberts, when she fell from grace, she wasn't able to recover.

Losing the EGOT

Occasionally I find myself sorting through particularly random trivia (this happened a few days ago in a conversation with a friend), and one of my favorite bits of trivia surrounds the younger of the acting Redgrave sisters.  While Vanessa was the great actor of her generation, Lynn had something else special about her.  Lynn managed to be the only person in the history of entertainment to receive nominations for an Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, and Tony award...and not win any.

This is of course both a huge compliment and an enormous disappointment.  Redgrave managed to get nominated for three Tonys, two Emmys, two Oscars, and a Grammy in her career, something almost every actor would kill for, but you have to assume that she wishes she could have taken the stage just once to accept one of those major awards (to her credit, she did pick up a pair of Golden Globe Awards).

We took a look at Redgrave's record six years ago, but I was curious after the conversation with my friend if there had been any new additions to this list, if any people who had been on the list had migrated off of it, and most importantly, if someone had tied Redgrave's record.  Below you'll find that her record is still intact, though there's still room for some performers to go after it, and a few more have been added to the challenge since six years ago.  I've listed below every living performer I could find that has been nominated for (and lost) three of the four of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony.  If you have a name I don't have on the list, please bring it to the comments (particularly for the Grammys, this is hard to research), and I'll update accordingly!

(Note: All of these are listed alphabetically)

Lauren Ambrose

Nomination She's Missing: Oscar

Emmys Lost: 2002 & 2003-Lead Actress in a Drama (Six Feet Under)

Grammys Lost: 2019-Best Musical Theater Album (My Fair Lady)

Tonys Lost: 2018-Best Actress in a Musical (My Fair Lady)

She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She won two SAG Awards for her work on Six Feet Under.

Can She Seal the Deal?: I would assume not.  Ambrose getting the lead in My Fair Lady is surprising in retrospect (her career had been relatively mixed since her breakout role in Six Feet Under ended, and I suppose this was a case of the "play" selling tickets more than any of the stars).  Currently she is on Servant for AppleTV, but hasn't done a film role in almost a decade, so an Oscar nomination would be a surprise.

Antonio Banderas

Nomination He's Missing: Grammy

Emmys Lost: 2004-Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (And Starring Pancho Villas Himself), 2018-Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (Genius)

Oscars Lost: 2019-Best Actor (Pain and Glory)

Tonys Lost: 2003-Best Actor in a Musical (Nine)

He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Banderas won a Drama Desk for Nine, and finally pulled off a Goya earlier this year for his work in Pain and Glory

Can He Seal the Deal?: Of all of the people on this list, Banderas has the most grounds to be mad, as under current awards rules he would have tied Lynn Redgrave for this award.  Banderas was a key vocalist on the cast recording on Nine, and that was nominated in 2004 for Best Musical Theater Album (but lost to the Bernadette Peters revival of Gypsy).  Today Banderas would've been nominated for a Grammy for the award as a principle vocalist, but at the time he wasn't because it was only the producers of the album that got nominated.  I don't know if Banderas has it in him to do another play (he hasn't gone back to either musicals or the theater in recent years), and so I kind of wonder if this is a trivia answer that will never be, but was very close to becoming reality.

Gabriel Byrne

Nomination He's Missing: Oscar
Emmys Lost: 2008 & 2009-Lead Actor in a Drama (In Treatment)
Grammys Lost: 1998-Spoken Word Album (The Nightingale and the Rose)
Tonys Lost: 2000-Lead Actor in a Play (A Moon for the Misbegotten), 2016-Lead Actor in a Play (Long Day's Journey Into Night)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: He did win a Golden Globe for his work on In Treatment

Can He Seal the Deal?: The trick to "pulling a Lynn Redgrave" (patent-pending) is to be able to make positions second through fifth, but not manage to grab first.  I think that Byrne could well nab an Oscar nomination, considering he is a multi-hyphenate entertainer (he not only acts, but also writes, directs, and produces), and doesn't seem too likely to win any of the other awards anytime soon.  He rarely does Broadway and his television show isn't on anymore.

Adam Driver

Nomination He's Missing: Grammy

Emmys Lost: 2013, 2014, & 2015-Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Girls), 2020-Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (Saturday Night Live)

Oscars Lost: 2018-Supporting Actor (BlacKkKlansman), 2019-Actor (Marriage Story)

Tonys Lost: 2019-Lead Actor in a Play (Burn This)

He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Driver has failed to secure any major entertainment award in his career, so there should be some sympathy for him, but it feels doubtful he's going to end his career empty-handed considering its current trajectory, so don't worry if you're a fan.

Can He Seal the Deal?: I would assume that Adam Driver is the type that might randomly get a Spoken Word Album nomination at some point (not for a memoir, but more so for a table read recording of The Crucible or something similar).  But Driver's career trajectory (he has been nominated for three of these awards in the past two years alone) indicates that a win is more likely to stop him from reaching Redgrave's record than a missing Grammy nomination.  He seems certain to win one (probably the Oscar or Tony) in the next few years.

James Franco

Nomination He's Mising: Tony
Emmys Lost: 2002-Lead Actor in a Miniseries (James Dean), 2011-Outstanding Special Class Programs (The 83rd Academy Awards...yes, James Franco was nominated for an Emmy for his comically bad hosting of the Oscars...let that sink in for a second), 2016-Outstanding Short Form Variety Series (Making a Scene)
Oscars Lost: 2010-Best Actor (127 Hours)
Grammys Lost: 2014-Spoken Word Album (Actors Anonymous)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Franco missed the Emmy but picked up the Golden Globe for his work in James Dean, and he missed the Oscar but pulled off another Globe for The Disaster Artist.

Can He Seal the Deal? I'm starting to think no.  Franco has done stage work (he did a turn in Of Mice and Men six years ago), but he wasn't nominated for a Tony Award (instead they went for his costar Chris O'Dowd).  Franco's sexual misconduct allegations have hurt his career; after his surprise Oscar snub in 2017 for The Disaster Artist, he has made direct-to-video & unreleased films, and his only more mainstream work was a cameo in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Deuce, which was a middling success at best for HBO.  Winning an Emmy at this point seems more probable than a Tony nomination.

Ed Harris

Nomination He's Missing: Grammy
Emmys Lost: 2005-Lead Actor in a Miniseries (Empire Falls), 2012-Supporting Actor in a Miniseries (Game Change), 2018-Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Westworld)
Oscars Lost: 1995-Supporting Actor (Apollo 13), 1998-Supporting Actor (The Truman Show), 2000-Lead Actor (Pollock), 2002-Supporting Actor (The Hours)
Tonys Lost: 1986-Actor in a Play (Precious Sons)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: He has two Golden Globe awards, for The Truman Show and Game Change

Can He Seal the Deal?: For a long time there, it seemed like Ed Harris would surely win an Oscar.  He received a staggering four nominations in the span of seven years, and one could make a pretty convincing argument that he was in second in two, if not three of those years (Amy Adams-take note).  Harris has since fallen on hard times with the Academy and has had no more luck with Emmy (not even his grand return to TV with Westworld has gotten him a trophy so far).  This of course could happen, as the Spoken Word Album category can slip someone in at almost any time, and Harris is famous enough that he could make it for some reading of Shakespeare or Arthur Miller.  However, he's never been a particularly "awards-seeking" performer (otherwise he would have beaten James Coburn in 1998), and I don't see this happening.

Marsha Mason

Nomination She's Missing: Tony
Emmys Lost: 1997-Guest Actress in a Comedy (Frasier)
Oscars Lost: 1973-Best Actress (Cinderella Liberty), 1977-Best Actress (The Goodbye Girl), 1979-Best Actress (Cinderella Liberty), and 1981-Best Actress (Only When I Laugh)
Grammys Lost: 2000-Best Comedy Album (The Prisoner of Second Avenue)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Mason won Golden Globes for both Cinderella Liberty and The Goodbye Girl

Can She Seal the Deal? The better question has to be how has she not?  Marsha Mason is one of my minor obsessions (she's been nominated for four Oscars, is still living, and yet somehow she disappeared off the face of the public sphere after her divorce to Neil Simon), and the real question was how was she ever going to get a Grammy nomination considering how minor her celebrity is.  With the Comedy Album citation, though, she's actually most well-known these days for her work on Broadway, as she's done six different productions in her career and is constantly working in the New York stage.  Make it happen Marcie!

Kate Nelligan

Nomination She's Missing: Grammy
Emmys Lost: 1989-Actress in a Drama Series (Road to Avonlea)
Oscars Lost: 1991-Supporting Actress (The Prince of Tides)
Tonys Lost: 1983-Actress in a Play (Plenty), 1984-Actress in a Play (A Moon for the Misbegotten), 1988-Featured Actress in a Play (Serious Money), 1989-Actress in a Play (Spoils of War)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She did win a BAFTA for Frankie and Johnny

Can She Seal the Deal?: The longtime Canadian stage actress enjoyed most of her awards-success at the Tonys, where in the 1980's she was a frequent contender but always missed (it can't feel too bad losing to the likes of Jessica Tandy and Glenn Close, though).  Her one-and-done nomination in 1991 at the Oscars makes her the person who has been on this list the longest, and as a whole she rarely acts anymore (on the stage or otherwise), so unless she has a particular penchant to get involved with an album and score a truly random nomination, this seems like the least likely of the list to happen.  It is interesting, though, how such a comparatively obscure (certainly the least well-known of these performers) actress could so quickly score 3/4 of an EGOT loss.

Kathleen Turner

Nomination She's Missing: Emmy
Grammys Lost: 2001-Spoken Word Album (The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets)
Oscars Lost: 1986-Lead Actress (Peggy Sue Got Married)
Tonys Lost: 1990-Actress in a Play (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), 2005-Actress in a Play (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She has two Golden Globes for Romancing the Stone and Prizzi's Honor.

Can She Seal the Deal?: Of the people on this list, I think this is probably the most shocking person on the list, considering that she almost certainly was close to getting nominated at the Emmys for playing Chandler's mother on Friends.  I would suspect, therefore, that she's also the most likely person to pull the Lynn Redgrave of anyone listed here.  She just needs a solid guest spot on a cable television series (probably not too hard considering their penchant for going for former headliners of a certain age for guest roles), and to not win the Tony Award (she probably would have won in 2005, but no one was going to take out Cherry Jones in Doubt).  I think that's manageable, and that she's probably going to make it thanks to the bizarre dozens-of-people-nominated Shakespeare Sonnets nomination she got in 2001.

Vanessa Williams

Nominations She's Missing: Oscar
Emmys Lost: 2007, 2008, and 2009-Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Ugly Betty), 2009-Performer in an Animated Program (Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies)
Grammys Lost: 1989-New Artist and Female R and B Performance ("The Right Stuff"), 1990-Female R and B Performance ("Dreamin"), 1992-Female R and B Performance ("Runnin' Back to You"), 1993-Record of the Year ("Save the Best for Last"), Female Pop Vocal Performance ("Save the Best for Last"), Female R and B Vocal Performance ("The Comfort Zone"), & Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals ("Love Is"), 1995-Female Pop Vocal Performance ("Colors of the Wind") & Female R and B Performance ("The Way That You Love"), 1997-Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album (Star Bright)
Tonys Lost: 2002-Actress in a Musical (Into the Woods)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She was Miss America, but umm, yeah, maybe she should get a little pity here.

Can She Seal the Deal?: Yeah, that list of Grammy losses is massive.  Williams is one of the most nominated women in the Recording Academy to never win.  Despite her seventeen year absence, I think her best shot would be to pick up one of the below-the-line Grammy Awards rather than take an Oscar nomination.  Williams did sing an Oscar-winning song, of course (1995's "Color of the Wind"), but she's not very much of a songwriter, and the movies have oddly never taken to her like music, television, and the theater.  So my gut says no, she can't quite get there (prove me wrong, casting directors), but may well win one of the other three awards before all is said and done.

And those are the ten!  Like I said, I researched pretty thoroughly, but if you trivia sleuths have an eleventh person let me know!

OVP: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Film: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Stars: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Song-"When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings," Costume Design, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Anthology films are such a strange affair.  In a world where television exists, and is pretty much what we exclusively associate episodic narratives with in terms of visual entertainment, it feels quaint but wholly unnecessary to have something like a Buster Scruggs coming in with its six distinct stories.  After all, we have reboots of The Twilight Zone and anthology series like Black Mirror that already fill this hole, so the Coen Brothers going after such a largely extinct cinematic genre feels at once exciting and a bit of a retread.  This is also true of the film itself.  While the movie has the distinct, unmistakable voice of the Coen Brothers, it also comes with some of the baggage of what clogged up anthology films in general: tricky messaging, uneven stories where some are clearly better than others, and a lack of proper resolution.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is cut into six segments, each starring at least one noteworthy star or important Coen Brothers player.  The title comes from the first segment, where a singing cowboy akin to Roy Rogers or Gene Autry named Buster Scruggs (Nelson) is wandering aimlessly along the countryside decked in all-white, and while he seems like a Gomer Pyle-sort of figure, he's actually incredibly violent, a quick draw whose skills should only be tested by those with a death wish.  We see him defeat in rough order three men, all-the-while keeping a sunny disposition and a hum in his voice, before he ultimately is taken down by a man-in-black with little to no resolution as to why.  It's here where the cheeky, but dismissible, Oscar-nominated song makes its appearance in the film.

This is all fun and well-acted, but it's also a harbinger of most of the stories to come in that you don't entirely get the point.  There's a lack of resolution, but more importantly a lack of crispness to the writing.  The film's unifying theme is death, with all of the tales featuring a pivotal demise driving the conclusion save the final one, where it's heavily implied the main protagonists were deceased the whole time.  Sometimes the stories are better than others; "The Gal Who Got Rattled," anchored by Zoe Kazan (if you've read this blog before you know that I'm not Kazan's biggest fan, so that I choose her over segments starring Daly, Franco, & Waits should say something), where she plays a young woman who is undone by bad timing & misfortune, is interesting and adds a dash of romance to an otherwise thoroughly unromantic film, but it's also the only story where there's a clear ending to the picture.  Ambiguity in an ending is great, and the Coen Brothers do it better than pretty much anyone this side of Woody Allen, but it's also a cop out if you just sort of present stories with none of them finding absolution.

This movie is easily watchable, and in the hands of the Coen Brothers, it's not like you're getting something bad, but it's also a movie that just sort of sits there.  With the exception of the final two installments (starring Kazan & Daly), I didn't feel like there was more to expand upon in this universe, which shouldn't be the case for a short story (where you're left wanting more) and certainly shouldn't be the case with ambiguity in the ending.  I don't mind a negative or dark finish (which all of the stories save for "All Gold Canyon" have), but I feel like these stories are incomplete, and frequently inconsistent in their narrative quality.  The film's costumes (its third Oscar nomination in addition to citations for writing and music), are also in-the-middle, with the inspired white suit of Buster Scruggs (considering his violence, a novel contradiction, enough to make us rethink our opinion of the man-in-black who overcomes him) an outlier in what is otherwise pretty routine western wear from Mary Zophres.  Overall, I feel like this is a lesser installment in the Coen Brothers filmography, a nice enough way to spend an evening but nothing particularly noteworthy.

John's Worst Films of 2017

Tonight, I will officially be announcing in my real life my favorites of the year (I do a teensy little awards show every year), and you’ll be getting my Top 10 best films list of the 2017 tomorrow on the blog.  However, in a year that was such a disaster in terms of the news, it has to be said that it wasn’t just politics that was causing anguish: it was also the movies.

While there was no egregiously-bad film like Stonewall that I managed to catch this year, there were surely a lot of bad movies that came out in 2017, or perhaps more damning, bland films.  Movies in 2017 were consistently “fine” or “okay” and rarely fascinating in a daring way, making going to the movies dull.  For that reason you’re not going to see movies that I thought took risks (like, say, mother!) mostly because I want filmmakers to take these kinds of chances, even if they aren’t always successful (it’s also because mother! is still better than all of these pictures, and that Razzy nomination for Lawrence in particular is just horrendous, as she’s good in the picture and not a little bit “the worst of the year”).  Instead, we go with the below failures, all of which I count as the last pleasant of the year (listed alphabetically):

Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon)

How do you ruin one of my all-time favorite movies?  Perhaps by draining it of humor, panache, or singers who can properly sing (sorry Emma, I love you but no, just no).  The film is underwhelming from the original in literally every way, and the sets look less like an organic castle and more like something you’d see in a Disneyland theme ride.  The cash grab clearly worked, but must Disney destroy everything special it makes with heinous duplication?

The Disaster Artist (dir. James Franco)

Franco’s last minute miss at the Oscars was almost certainly due to the sexual harassment allegations against him.  It should have been because he plays his role as Tommy Wiseau as a joke, a comic look at a man who has no understanding of himself.  He’s mysterious because Franco doesn’t do any homework, claiming “it’s just Tommy!” in a cheeky frat-boy move that cruelly tries to be a message movie about people without talent succeeding, but instead is a passionless, dull affair that feels less like talent letting loose and more like actors tricking their fans into paying for a bad film.  Also, Dave Franco gives arguably the most listless performance I recall seeing all year.

Downsizing (dir. Alexander Payne)

Stuffed to the brim with interesting ideas, Payne’s script ignores all of them, giving the audience just “passage of time” jumps when the picture itself could be at its most fascinating.  Weighed down by Matt Damon as a character that clearly has never had an original thought in his life, the movie meanders around major questions of the purpose of life, the foolishness of man, and the selfishness of “sacrifice,” but it doesn’t have a point-of-view on any of them.

The Greatest Showman (dir. Michael Gracey)

Though the music is occasionally fun (I liked “Never Enough” and “Rewrite the Stars” in particular), but this is a terrible actual movie.  No one is bringing their A-Game with the acting, with particularly awful performances from Jackman and Zendaya, both weakly connecting to their costars and in Jackman’s case, being in strained voice.  And that “This is Me” number might sound great coming out of Keala Settle, but the lyrics and back-half of the plot is so hackneyed it would have been cast out as too syrupy even in the fourth season of Glee.

Marjorie Prime (dir. Michael Almereyda)

Like Downsizing, this is not short on ideas or fine actors in the cast, but it has few answers for these questions.  It’s hard to criticize a film that finally gives Lois Smith a leading role, but her supporting cast does her no favors, with Jon Hamm playing his character as merely a plot device, and Geena Davis/Tim Robbins phoning in their roles with little care.  Coupled with a bizarre ending that feels so toss-away it’s difficult to figure out not only the purpose of this film, but also the point.

OVP: The Disaster Artist (2017)

Film: The Disaster Artist (2017)
Stars: James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Ari Graynor, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver
Director: James Franco
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I have never seen The Room.  I feel like I needed to get that out of the way before I started this review, because so much of what seemed to inspire love for The Disaster Artist (it was a surprisingly packed theater for a Saturday matinee, and one that was predominantly male and under 40, which is again a shock for such a time of day) seemed to stem from inside jokes in the picture.  The end credits of the movie, in fact, show the Francos' film seen next to the legendarily awful picture by Tommy Wiseau.  The reasons I've never seen The Room are A) I am almost certainly asleep at midnight, even on a Saturday, and if I'm not I better be within 50 feet of my bed or couch and B) I'm not a huge fan of the hate viewing.  I don't love watching mediocre movies (exception to the rule: I kind of have a thing for campy Vincent Price or Universal Monster horror films), as there are so many good movies, books, TV, or the like that I'll never have enough time to see that why should I make time for something truly terrible?  One could argue there's an experience to be had in seeing The Room, and perhaps someday I'll give it a try, but I'll start by saying the celebration of mediocrity is "too hip" for me, and I've never gotten the point.

(Spoilers Ahead) As a result, I will say that about twenty minutes into The Disaster Artist I realized that I was not going to be a fan.  Because a lot of the precipice of The Disaster Artist, and truly the ending of the film, is centered around the idea that we should celebrate people's success, even if they truly don't deserve it.  The film centers around Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) and Greg Sestero (Dave Franco), two real-life figures who went to Hollywood to try and succeed, but like so many ultimately found that they didn't have connections or the talent to be able to flourish in the entertainment business.  As a result, thanks to an enormous sum of money that Wiseau has access to (one of several mysteries that remain annoying unanswered in the picture), they create a movie called The Room, funded for nearly $6 million, that is clearly utter garbage, but filled with aspiring actors and film professionals that are also struggling to get a big break in a real movie.  This is where the bulk of the buzzy cast comes from-Rogen, Weaver, Graynor, Hutcherson, Zac Efron...it's a cavalcade of Hollywood players impersonating "nobodies" onscreen...perhaps a cruel joke as Franco could have used this time to maybe throw in some actors who could use big breaks similar to what Wiseau & Sestero desperately craved, but I digress.

Anyway, the film's central theme is predicated on either looking on in awe as a cult classic movie is made, or specifically what your impression of Wiseau as a film character is.  Franco's mannerisms as him seem incredibly accurate (I watched some tapes of him after the movie, and it's a dead-on impersonation), but let's not confuse mimicry for fine acting, because that's not what's going on here.  Franco's Wiseau is unknowable, but he shouldn't be-he might be a mystery in real life, but Franco should have an understanding of what the character knows and he doesn't seem to get there.  Is he desperately in love with Greg, or does he suffer from mental health issues?  Wiseau feels like he's deranged in Franco's eyes, someone who isn't necessarily dangerous but clearly has no idea of social cues and needs professional help.  It feels insulting to continually make fun of such a person, which is what the movie does.  Quite frankly, it crosses the line into areas that made me very uncomfortable, getting cheap laughs off of the behavior of someone who seems unwell.  Wiseau's final moments, where he is basically tricked into enjoying the reaction of the audience (who thinks his dramatic picture is a mocking joke) should be heartbreaking, but the way that Franco frames it is uplifting, as if to celebrate that people loathe his art.  Some have speculated in real-life that Wiseau is a performance piece, someone who has created a persona that has continued for decades in a similar mode to that temporarily undertaken by Joaquin Phoenix or Andy Kaufman, but there's no hints of that in The Disaster Artist.  Instead, it just feels cruel, and reliant on a cliched narrative to get its point across in the process

Without some sort of understanding of Wiseau's motivations or reasonings, the movie fails.  James Franco's work is all surface-level, technical skill but with no investment other than doing a reliably good impression.  His brother Dave, who has never exhibited the same acting chops as James, gets a more knowable character but even there he fails.  We never get an understanding of whether or not Greg resented Wiseau taking away his more conventional career path (there's a scene in the film where the real-life Bryan Cranston offers Greg a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle, a huge break for an aspiring actor, but Wiseau demands that Greg turn it down and continue on their film), or why Greg seemed to like Tommy.  Honestly-a movie centered around a friendship should have a better understanding of why they are friends, but Dave Franco's work here is too 1-dimensional & cheeky and you leave without any understanding of Greg, whose book the picture is based off of (and as a result, should be an easier task for an actor).  About the only person who is passably good in the film is Weaver, who manages to sell a difficult and schmaltzy scene where she points out why her a struggling actor on the set who could have a normal life with her husband, is willing to endure the madness of the movie-because it's as close as she'll ever get to realizing her dream of being a professional actor.  That's clearly the message The Disaster Artist is trying to achieve-that a warped ending to your dream is still a dream fulfilled-but it does so without understanding its characters, plot, or even deserving such credit.

King Cobra (2016)

Film: King Cobra (2016)
Stars: Garrett Clayton, Christian Slater, James Franco, Keegan Allen
Director: Justin Kelly
Oscar History: Sure...a film about the world of gay porn is going to get an Oscar nomination.  Right.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

When you think of a film about pornography, and it's not a situation where you're waiting for something to buffer, you think of Boogie Nights.  Paul Thomas Anderson really launched his impressive career as a filmmaker with this magnum opus, an epic film about pornography in the 1970's.  So good is Boogie Nights (and it really is sensational, even upon revisit), that it's kind of hard to compare it to pretty much any other film about the industry.  You're either succeeding in its shadow or miserably failing in comparison.  So when I heard King Cobra would be turned into a movie, I was kind of staggered as to what it might mean-would it be able to be much more than a "gay Boogie Nights" or would it, like so many James Franco projects lately, simply be another well-meaning misfire?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is the rare biopic that I approve of, actually, so I want to get that out of the way.  I'm usually incredibly against biopics, but as this is a subject that's not particularly well-known (it's worth noting that they didn't even stick to all of the same names as real-life figures), and it's willing to make most of its real-life subjects look less than flattering, I give it a pass on that front.  The film follows Sean, who uses the stage name Brent Corrigan (Clayton) as he becomes a gay porn sensation through producer Stephen (Slater).  Meanwhile, we see a concurrent story of Joe (Franco) and Harlow (Allen), a pimp and escort who are trying to make it in gay porn, but aren't able to break in and are running low on money.

The actual story appears to be as sensationalistic as it was onscreen, with Sean actually being underaged in several of his videos, as well as how Sean inadvertently led to Harlow and Joe killing the man who discovered him in a violent murder/arson.  The film, weirdly, though, doesn't really know how to handle this much plot-the editing and direction from Justin Kelly is weirdly underwhelming on this front.  Take, for example, the scene where Sean is wearing a wire to try and exonerate himself and implicate Harlow and Joe late in the film-it should be a thriller, but we barely even know that he's wearing a wire through much of the scene.  The film pulls away and makes most scenes anticlimactic, never really knowing what the focus of the film is.  Is it on the seedy underbelly of a multi-billion dollar sin industry, or is it on an eventual murder, or is it a coming-of-age story for Sean?

This lack of direction is a big problem in the film, and kind of shuts down something that has some defiantly good parts, particularly Christian Slater as a lascivious man, still sexually-obsessed with the gay porn actors he discovers.  Slater is by far the best part of the movie.  You'd think it would be a copy of Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights, but Slater, who is desperately lonely and still grappling with his sexuality, takes the aging porn producer role into a different direction.  The film is never judgmental about his character (or about homosexuality or sex in general, save for one pair of scenes with Molly Ringwald/Alicia Silverstone, which was a nice change of pace), but it isn't shy about showing his intentions, and in particular his obsession with Sean.  The rest of the acting is just okay-Franco has played this role before, and with more aplomb, in Spring Breakers, and Garrett Clayton proves why you should always hire good actors to play bad actors, because Clayton coasts too much when Sean is off-screen, and plays him too vacuously for the ending to pay off.

The film is, particularly for a picture about gay sex, oddly prudish about nudity.  It's hard to imagine this film ending up in many theaters and is mostly going to be delivered to audiences On Demand, so I'm kind of stunned, for example, that there is not a penis on display in the entire film, and the camerawork that they have to achieve to ensure you never see one borders on the idiotic.  Additionally, I felt the ending was completely unearned (Sean didn't grow in this movie, at least not onscreen, and so the ending felt ridiculously cheesy) and both an homage to Boogie Nights, and yet one where you need context to get it.  In Boogie Nights we spend most of the time hearing about Dirk Diggler's famously large penis and never seeing it until the last scene; in King Cobra we see clearly Brent Corrigan's famously firm posterior, except that we haven't heard about Brent's bum for most of the picture like we did Dirk (this is just famous in real life, not as highlighted in the movie), so it doesn't have the same "mic drop" effect it should.  Corrigan did, in fact, end up becoming a wildly-successful adult film star and had a modicum of success as a producer and actor in more mainstream films, but there's no indication of that in the movie and Corrigan isn't famous enough for the director to assume the audience knows the ending to that story.  It's a really odd ending, is what I'm trying to get at-an almost complete fail.

All-in-all, this film is better than it should be (it's very watchable, thanks almost exclusively to Slater knocking it out of the park), but it's still a pale imitation of films that went before it.  If you're interested in something that isn't your normal movie experience (or the world of gay porn), you should see it, but I'm not promising much.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Film: Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard
Director: Sam Raimi
Oscar History: It is one of only two films that led the Box Office in the past twenty years that received no Oscar nominations.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

As we are investigating the films of 2007, I figured it was important for me to see the year's highest-grossing picture (domestically, at least).  Somehow when it originally came out I missed the movie, despite having seen both of the originals and having a bit of a thing at the time for both Topher Grace and James Franco (also, what the hell happened to Topher Grace's career-he was the highlight of That 70s Show and yet Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis became superstars and Grace became Shelley Long).  The thing that kept me from the film at the time were the awful, awful reviews that accompanied it, but despite this fact the film made gazillions of dollars (for comparison's sake it made more money than mammoth hits like Captain America: Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy).  So I was curious what it would be like filling in this missing piece of Marvel iconography.  Unfortunately the initial reviews were right.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's biggest problem, oft-discussed when it originally was reviewed, is that it is WAY too busy.  When I originally started I groaned a little bit because the film was going to cross the two hour marker, but then I recalled that they would be covering three of the biggest villains in the Spider-Man universe: Venom, Sandman, and the Green Goblin.  How in the world were they going to give each of those three a real plotline without short-shifting one?  The answer was, of course, that they weren't.  In the Batman series the films became greedily worse whenever they expanded the number of villains, but while one villain is controlled, two villains is potentially solid but shaky, and three villains always ends in disaster.  Comic book villains are generally more interesting, at least aesthetically, than heroes, and so we want to see what they do, see what it's like for them to occasionally win before they eventually fall to their doom or learn the error of their ways.  Here, with three villains in such a short amount of time, we see no growth from any of them.

We see, for example, the ridiculous plotline of Venom (Eddie Brock, played by Grace).  Eddie goes from being a happy-go-lucky guy on top of the world, trying to get ahead, but then he quickly falls and becomes homicidal after just a few quick mishaps (his girlfriend Gwen Stacy dumps him-also, Gwen Stacy is coming chronologically after Mary Jane, totally throwing that entire lore from the comic books to the wind-and Peter Parker exposes his lies).  If we're meant to feel a little bit of sympathy for Venom, it fails (he kind of deserved both of these falls), and the movie is predicated on us thinking Peter has done something bad when, quite frankly outside of trying to kill the Sandman instead of arresting him, he doesn't.

The film also sacrifices a critical part of the initial movie by making the guy who killed Uncle Ben be someone different than the man he initially thought.  The original movie and comic book sees Spider-Man take up a hero's lifestyle when he realizes that letting evil grow has dire consequences (his uncle is killed by a man whom Peter doesn't stop from sticking up a convenience store).  As a result, the film in order to establish a quick rivalry between one of the three villains, gives up one of the most important moments in the first film and in Spider-Man's history.  I know I don't usually care about a film matching the source material, but the Uncle Ben story is arguably one of the most beautiful in comic book history, and I just don't see why they gave it up.  The Sandman villain, it should be noted, just randomly knows how to control his powers despite not even planning to become a villain, and we get a lazy story arch involving a dying daughter who doesn't even get a name (if she does, it's mentioned like once).  Overall, the Sandman and Venom stories are so ridiculously rushed and stupid that you wonder if they didn't actually plan on a fourth film and were just throwing paint on the wall.

The main stories, the ones that don't feel as rushed surrounding the Peter/Mary Jane/Harry love triangle have already been done to death in the first two pictures.  We make no use of Gwen Stacy (poor Bryce Dallas Howard gets underutilized yet again...also, she is in a LOT of movies), and Harry in love with Mary Jane is yet another repeat of a previous film.  We also get no indication of how Harry survives a blast about halfway through the film (or whether the Sandman is even beatable), and then dies later on in the film.  The movie tries for the epic, and everything is there, but it's trying to be too many things to too many people, and Tobey Maguire, nearing his mid-thirties, is too old to still be playing a guy who can't figure his life out like he's still a teenager.

Overall, then, this is possibly the worst comic book movie I've ever seen.  It's a mess, and when the only cool things about your film are seeing powers onscreen come to life, you have an issue (that's in literally every comic book film ever).  It's worth noting that I've never seen Daredevil, and I'm just now remembering Green Lantern exists (that was worse than this), but where does this rank in your personal estimation?  Do you think this film ruined the Spidey franchise?  Share your thoughts in the comments!