Review: Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Reviews

The Hottest State

A bad break-up movie

By PETER KEOUGH | September 5, 2007

2.0 Stars

THE HOTTEST STATE: Mark Webber and Catalina Sandino Moreno as Dopey and Grumpy.

Breaking up is hard to do. So is making a movie about it. Ethan Hawke, in his adaptation of his own novel, doesn’t try very hard. Or maybe he tries too hard. Relating the ecstasy and the heartbreak that seem so unique at the time but are the common experience of pretty much everybody usually inspires sophomoric poetry — and that’s the case here. The casting doesn’t help. Mark Webber as Hawke stand-in William sports a stocking cap in one scene, and he resembles Dopey the Dwarf. The object of his obsession, Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno), might well be called Grumpy. Nothing in the montages of bliss and agony, the tortured voiceovers, the pang-filled etiolated flashbacks, or the wall-to-wall burbling soundtrack convinced me that this pair even liked each other, or that I should like them. When Laura Linney and Hawke himself enter as William’s parents, however, so does genuine feeling, so maybe this effort is just an awkward patch in a filmmaker’s development.

Related: Festival of the book, Family plots, Jerry-built, More

Topics: Reviews , Celebrity News, Entertainment, Movies, More

| More

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

REVIEW: FOLLOW ME: THE YONI NETANYAHU STORY | May 29, 2012
Whatever your opinion of the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, you can't deny that his brother Yoni was a hero, a courageous man whose conflicts and triumphs mirror those of his homeland.

REVIEW: MOONRISE KINGDOM | June 01, 2012
Wes Anderson should always make movies featuring characters who are pubescent or younger — like Rushmore , which until this film was his best.

REVIEW: WHERE DO WE GO NOW? | May 22, 2012
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare.

REVIEW: MEN IN BLACK 3 | May 24, 2012
Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fifth dimensional alien, can see the infinite possibilities each moment possesses and the infinite contingencies that caused it to happen.