People Places Things (2015)

Everything in me wanted to outright love this movie, and it kept slipping just through my fingers. Sadly, it's more than six months on, and I can remember next to nothing about it. I remember enjoying Jermaine Clement! That's no shock. Here's what I wrote initially:

I have nothing but good will for Jemaine Clement, who is tremendously charismatic and manages to play a deeply flawed character while keeping you endeared. Really, the performances are never a problem - from core to supporting actors, everyone does great work with the material. 

The problem is with some of that material. The story itself, of a man trying to course correct a year after his relationship breaks up while balancing new entanglements and custody arrangements over his children, is usually something that would have me rolling my eyes. It’s very simple and isn’t attempting to reinvent the wheel, but it’s incredibly comforting how messy and awful the characters and their situations are. 

Unfortunately, a lot of them time this is written with such a heavy desire to be messy and funny-awkward that often, it’s just uncomfortable, and characters just read as awful and impossible to understand - Clement’s Will was generally balanced, but his ex was given hardly any characterisation in favour of messiness and broadness to an extreme that felt almost unfair. Unrelenting, at the least. The last act of this movie is also extremely rushed and feels hastily strung together, especially when compared to how lazily and easily it feels like it rolls through the earlier sections, when it’s just allowing characters to interact and wallow and just to be people, rather than comedy figurines. 

Rating: 5.5/10 - Having jogged my memory somewhat, I've adjusted my rating accordingly. If you need something to watch and you want sweet and messy and awkward, this will do the trick. Jermaine Clement will make sure it's time not wasted, but it's certainly not a movie that stayed with me, and it can absolutely grating.