I'd heard a lot of hype about Stephen Poliakoff and the trailer looked great, so I was anticipating something special. The first twenty minutes or so provide a brilliant set-up, and huge credit must go to the set-designers and costume people for incredible visuals.
However, the film commits the cardinal sin of not bothering to give you any reason to like the characters. The two leads are stiff and monotonous (how can a man who has a threesome with two nubile blonds and hires thugs to gatecrash his own party be so ditch-water dull as Paul?) whilst the minor characters are given only the briefest of set-up scenes for us to get to know them before being referred to nostalgically for the rest of the film. What are we meant to think - oh yes, the boy we saw for two seconds holding a sparkler, how poignant to think he is now 40 and sitting in a café! Who cares!? Furthermore, there has been a definite decision to avoid the obvious path (I don't want to put a spoiler, but when you see it you'll know what I mean). This path would indeed have been obvious, yes, but it would have given some substance to the film, which is otherwise totally bland.
A lack of consistency also pervades the characterisation, and rather than making the characters elusive and mysterious, it just makes them unbelievable. Would a man who has built a huge fortune from nothing be genuinely content to lose it all and live in squalor? Would a brilliant businessman really accept a huge salary to work as a consultant and then, 5 months later, simply utter a one-word plan and be confused as to why anyone thought this was insufficient? If so, why? If we aren't given an insight into his thinking process, all we can assume is that there is no real plan behind his character: he is just a mishmash of whatever dialogue the writer thinks is clever at the time...
And if I haven't put you off yet, the final conversation between the two lead characters is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard in a "serious" movie.
Friends and Crocodiles scrapes 3 points for the brilliant first 20 minutes and for the sets and costumes throughout, but unless you want a lesson in how not to do it, I really wouldn't bother.
However, the film commits the cardinal sin of not bothering to give you any reason to like the characters. The two leads are stiff and monotonous (how can a man who has a threesome with two nubile blonds and hires thugs to gatecrash his own party be so ditch-water dull as Paul?) whilst the minor characters are given only the briefest of set-up scenes for us to get to know them before being referred to nostalgically for the rest of the film. What are we meant to think - oh yes, the boy we saw for two seconds holding a sparkler, how poignant to think he is now 40 and sitting in a café! Who cares!? Furthermore, there has been a definite decision to avoid the obvious path (I don't want to put a spoiler, but when you see it you'll know what I mean). This path would indeed have been obvious, yes, but it would have given some substance to the film, which is otherwise totally bland.
A lack of consistency also pervades the characterisation, and rather than making the characters elusive and mysterious, it just makes them unbelievable. Would a man who has built a huge fortune from nothing be genuinely content to lose it all and live in squalor? Would a brilliant businessman really accept a huge salary to work as a consultant and then, 5 months later, simply utter a one-word plan and be confused as to why anyone thought this was insufficient? If so, why? If we aren't given an insight into his thinking process, all we can assume is that there is no real plan behind his character: he is just a mishmash of whatever dialogue the writer thinks is clever at the time...
And if I haven't put you off yet, the final conversation between the two lead characters is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard in a "serious" movie.
Friends and Crocodiles scrapes 3 points for the brilliant first 20 minutes and for the sets and costumes throughout, but unless you want a lesson in how not to do it, I really wouldn't bother.