I've read the 4 reviews that were previously posted for this "film" and I'm wondering...Did we watch the same movie? Because if we did, then I can only surmise that these 4 people are either family or friends of Jim Fields...which then I can understand their effusive praise.
The movie I watched in fact was aptly titled, the only problem is that it is unlike a life anyone would had after their divorce. Jim Fields tries hard to write, direct and produce (but surprisingly not act in it) a credible film about a year in the life of Dylan Holms, a character I disliked from the beginning of the movie. I wanted so badly to root for this sad sack guy, the poor man could not catch a break, I felt sorry for him, and in the beginning I was genuinely sympathetic. It was well before the first half was finished that my sadness and sympathetic feelings for this young man turned into great annoyance and dislike for him...the entire game changed when it became apparent to me that Dylan Holms is nothing short of the village idiot...all of these terrible things that happen to him are a direct result that he has absolutely no common sense...how he was able to make it to adulthood and has a great job (something like a web developer) has got to be the direct result of a third miracle that the Vatican needs to canonize a saint...but I can't blame it all on the way this character was written...the actor, Nick Knipe who portrays Dylan came across as wooden and unprepared...he delivers his dialogue as if he were reading it from a teleprompter off stage and any emotion he showed was forced if it existed at all...he was woefully miscast and while I can believe that he was married to the first husband, I could not believe for one minute that he was engaged to a gym bunny nick named "Brock the Rock" or that he had any kind of romantic relationship with John a best selling hunky writer who thought he was in love with our Dylan from the moment he laid eyes on him...sorry NOT believable...I understand that on these low budget indie films their choices are very limited and have to use a lot of bottom feeder actors who are either starting out with no experience, knows someone or sleeping with someone like a director or producer, or is related to said director and producer (not always, but 8 out of 10 times this is true)...What I didn't expect was that Mr. Fields chose to cast his entire movie with "talent" from what I have to assume is called the Talentless Agency( whose motto is "Everyone works no matter how they are") Either the entire cast got their lines the morning of or were allowed to ad lib if they forgot a line (reshooting costs a lot of $$ that they don' have)...almost every single actor in this film delivered their respective lines in a such a way, they must have borrowed Nick Knipe's teleprompter (one hopes that they had enough $$ to rent them in bulk)...As much as I would like to review all the actors who had speaking lines, that would be impossible due to lack of space...however, I did want to mention 2 actors who surprised me and showed a lot of potential...Joe DeSanti as Brock and Justin Parker as John...their performances while wooden, were the only two that showed any hint at real emotion
The movie I watched in fact was aptly titled, the only problem is that it is unlike a life anyone would had after their divorce. Jim Fields tries hard to write, direct and produce (but surprisingly not act in it) a credible film about a year in the life of Dylan Holms, a character I disliked from the beginning of the movie. I wanted so badly to root for this sad sack guy, the poor man could not catch a break, I felt sorry for him, and in the beginning I was genuinely sympathetic. It was well before the first half was finished that my sadness and sympathetic feelings for this young man turned into great annoyance and dislike for him...the entire game changed when it became apparent to me that Dylan Holms is nothing short of the village idiot...all of these terrible things that happen to him are a direct result that he has absolutely no common sense...how he was able to make it to adulthood and has a great job (something like a web developer) has got to be the direct result of a third miracle that the Vatican needs to canonize a saint...but I can't blame it all on the way this character was written...the actor, Nick Knipe who portrays Dylan came across as wooden and unprepared...he delivers his dialogue as if he were reading it from a teleprompter off stage and any emotion he showed was forced if it existed at all...he was woefully miscast and while I can believe that he was married to the first husband, I could not believe for one minute that he was engaged to a gym bunny nick named "Brock the Rock" or that he had any kind of romantic relationship with John a best selling hunky writer who thought he was in love with our Dylan from the moment he laid eyes on him...sorry NOT believable...I understand that on these low budget indie films their choices are very limited and have to use a lot of bottom feeder actors who are either starting out with no experience, knows someone or sleeping with someone like a director or producer, or is related to said director and producer (not always, but 8 out of 10 times this is true)...What I didn't expect was that Mr. Fields chose to cast his entire movie with "talent" from what I have to assume is called the Talentless Agency( whose motto is "Everyone works no matter how they are") Either the entire cast got their lines the morning of or were allowed to ad lib if they forgot a line (reshooting costs a lot of $$ that they don' have)...almost every single actor in this film delivered their respective lines in a such a way, they must have borrowed Nick Knipe's teleprompter (one hopes that they had enough $$ to rent them in bulk)...As much as I would like to review all the actors who had speaking lines, that would be impossible due to lack of space...however, I did want to mention 2 actors who surprised me and showed a lot of potential...Joe DeSanti as Brock and Justin Parker as John...their performances while wooden, were the only two that showed any hint at real emotion