MOVIE REVIEW: Serious Moonlight
© A.J. Malouin 2009
(Rating: 17 by The Film Snob.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)
(2009/USA. Directed by Cheryl Hines.)
“Serious Moonlight” is a mixed bag — and most of that bag is filled with lumps of coal.
At the point where the Meg Ryan character lies unconscious and duck-taped on a bathroom floor, “Serious Moonlight” suddenly becomes a vastly more interesting movie. Whether this kind of a set piece should be scripted into *every* Meg-Ryan movie is, of course, open to debate.
It certainly couldn’t hurt to try it in her next three or four projects, however.
None of this is Meg Ryan’s fault, of course. It’s the fault of (1) a half-baked script, and (2) An Adoring Public who thinks a nose crinkle is Acting.
The Meg Ryan character (hereafter know as “Louise”) arrives one day early a the Home In The Country, as a surprise for her husband Ian, played winningly by Timothy Hutton. It Real Surprise it is, fer sure, as Ian is planning to meet a younger woman that day, take her to Paris, and divorce Louise.
Faced with the surprise, Louise accidently knocks Ian out by hitting him with a thrown flowerpot. Once presented with this opportunity, the quick-thinking, Type-A Louise decides to make Ian her prisoner until he decides to fall in love with her again.
Here’s where things get sticky, both with duct tape and more gooey dialogue, and with additional lame plot points that make this a first-draft of a movie and NOT something that audiences should have to actually endure.
Nevertheless? If you love Meg Ryan you will love this movie.
Soooooo, Louise ties Ian up with duct tape and swears that she will not let him loose again until he falls in love with her again.
Ian escapes and Louise flowerpots him again, *this* time duct-taping him with his pants down on a toilet, to overcome a major problem Ian had when he was duct-taped the first time.
By this time, The Film Snob literally cannot bear to watch this movie.
Suddenly, however, it improves perceptibly. Louise becomes unconscious and duct-taped by a guy who is doing the yard work and casing the joint.
When Louise doesn’t have to act out the roller coaster of emotions that the script puts her through — but just, instead, gets to lie there unconscious — EVERYthing seems rejuvenated: the script, the movie, the audience.
Ian/Hutton gives a semi-moving monologue to the comatose Louise, beautiful as she is when she is not talking. Not crinkled-nose-emoting. Not acting.
In short, when she is not trying to invigorate a mediocre script with skills that are a bridge too far for her.
The the 23-year-old mistress then shows up (again) and the friends of the yard work guy who is now robbing the joint show up.
Suddenly, Ian is still duct-taped to a toilet, but he is now joined by his duct-taped wife Louise, and by his 23-year-old mistress.
The whole thing is just painful — and here we referring to what the audience is going through.
The movie has its moments — although they are VERY few. When the Meg-Ryan character stops throwing herself around like a very cute manatee, the Timothy Hutton character Finally has something meaningful to play off of.
There are one or three other minutes of worthwhile stuff in this 84 minutes of mostly gunk.
Generally, however? This is a bomb of throw-the-Earth-off-its-axis magnitude.
It is a project of no serious moonlight whatsoever.
If you are a Meg Ryan fan, you will enjoy this thing.
If you thought “Waitress” was a good movie, you may be also able to remain vital throughout the 84 minutes during which the lameness of “Serious Moonlight” attempts to kill you.
If you value coherence, acting, and human decency, however, you may be hard pressed to even endure almost anything of what is going on here.
Tragically and awfully, the credits of “Serious Moonlight” indicate that its writer, Adrienne Shelly, died without getting to shepherd a finished project to the big screen.
She left with a lot of work yet to do.
(1 hr 24. Rated “R” in the USA for language and some threatening behavior. In English. With Meg Ryan as Louise, Timothy Hutton as Ian, Kristen Bell as Sara, Justin Long as Todd, Andy Ostroy as a Police Officer, Nathan Dean as a Detective, Kimberlee Peterson as a trashy girl, Derek Carter as Man #1, and Bill Parks as Man #2.)