Of Meercats and Men: JUNEBUG

Every few years or so a movie comes out of Sundance that the distributers are so excited about, it gets full release treatment, months of trailers and fullscale openings in simultaneous cities. This year the movie was Phil Morrison's directorial debut, JUNEBUG. Compared to Woody Allen and Jim Jarmusch, Morrison's work is character focused, with lots of time to get to know our screen friends, and countless environmental shots (some of the most effective are soundless still shots of the rooms in the house). The story follows Chicago art gallery owner Madeline (Embeth Davidtz) on her first visit to the rural North Carolina hometown her husband George (Alessandro Nivola). Although the reason is to sign an untrained painter of inspired civil war battle scenes, the end result is a culture clash with her husband of six month's family. The mother is stand-offish and judgemental, the father is passive and silent and the brother absolutely hates George (and his own life).

The characters are indeed full, the cinematography moving, and it feels like a sundance film, but in the end, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. The people failed me. They were completely real, but thoroughly unlikeable. Its a slice of life movie, but this slice is not particularly enjoyable to eat. I was impatient for the movie to end ... and since the director never really decided whose story it was, it really could have ended at any point. Almost no one in the movie learns anything, or grows... and, well, I may just be a little biased against backwoods hicks. I don't understand people whose lives revolve around their community church and who don't know the difference between Arts and Crafts. I guess I am a little culturally elitist, and this movie has been described as a red state-blue state conflict ... but I still blame the director. He took the easy way out with the script and just filmed moment to moment without ever thinking of the big picture and 'the message' of the movie, if there ever was one, gets lost in the details.

The lone highlight in the film is the performance of Amy Adams, who plays George's brother's fiance, very pregnant and very talkative. The one person living in the house who really makes an effort with the new guest, she is a revelation and brought a smile to my face whenever she was on screen. Her performance is so good, her story became the only one I cared about (in fact there is a bit with a television show about meercats that is best 2 minutes of the movie). And the movie is worth seeing for her alone. But you know what, you should see it anyway because you might not suffer from the same prejudices as I do, and might really enjoy it - certainly there are so many critics falling over themselves to praise it, it might just be one of those movies for me that I just don't agree with other people on (like Far from Heaven and Beautiful Mind).

JUNEBUG is recommended for fans of intense character driven movies, people scouting next year's supporting actress oscar, and people curious how the other (obviously more than half) lives. Rick's Rating: B.