Feast or Famine
by Flick Chick Vique
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Feast of Love cooks up 2 &1/2 Red Vines for being less than satisfying |
A fairly young marriage. Young, impulsive love at first sight. Dangerous, forbidden love. Comfortable, age worn love. Yes, Feast of Love explores all these phases of being in love and more.
Set in a lush, green community in Oregon, Morgan Freeman stars as Harry, a patriarchal cupid of sorts. Not that he is the impetus for love but he has an uncanny timing for being on the scene to witness love in bloom first hand. He is a wise sage, doling out bits of advice like so many breadcrumbs to (love) starved pigeons.
First and foremost of these lost lovebirds is Greg Kinnear as Bradley. The coffee shop owner is less than lucky in love and we follow his clumsy attempts to find a lasting, true relationship. Kinnear, as always, is simply charming.
But the movie as a whole bored me to tears. I found many of the plotlines/relationships easily predictable. And while I would be the last to criticize a performance by Mr. Freeman, I wanted to scream from the very beginning when it was obvious this was going to be another heavily narrated movie. Enough with this time worn format! Actually, I wouldn’t have minded so much but if you’re going to have a lot of narration, the writing better be darn good.
And there lies my biggest problem with Feast of Love. The concept of following love in various relationships was probably done best by Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters. But two more recent movies come to mind as films that have tackled this subject with far better results. Last year’s The Last Kiss with Zach Braff had me laughing and crying all the way. Even this year’s In the Land of Women handled the subject with more pleasing results.
While I have no real problem with the acting or all the nudity, the whole thing just left me cold. Even its dramatic ending didn’t elicit any emotion from me. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen the aforementioned movies, I would have had a greater appreciation for it. But I did and I don’t.
Feast of Love, left me hungry. Not for more of it but for a better movie.
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