Feast of Love (2007)

Please don't spend money on this.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie does not have a cohesive plot or point. Half of the time I was wondering whether or not one of the 30+ characters were going to die. This movie fails to movie in the worst ways possible. Morgan Freeman does a great job at being a creepy old man who ends the movie by asking one of the main character's to come be his "little girl". He also watched a couple have sex in a football stadium for longer than necessary. I mean he could have acted a little more surprised or even shocked. Instead he just sits there and watches them for an inordinate amount of time. Oh wait, I forgot that this movie has no sense of time whatsoever.

Based on a novel by Charles Baxter, Robert Benton's "Feast of Love" finds a large cast of characters grappling with issues of love and loss. Presiding over this ensemble is actor Morgan Freeman, whose monologues drip with condescension.At its best, "Feast of Love" portrays love as a biological trick; a messy bit of code adept at getting humans procreating, a functional utility of mate-guarding, gene-spreading and kin-selection. "True love", meanwhile, is something else altogether. Repeatedly in Benton's film, "true loves" come and go, human beings arbitrarily removed and replaced. Each new lover is rationalised as being one's sole "soul mate", until romance fails and, propelled by hope, lonely hearts go out into the world again with fishing rods in tow.Unintentionally cheesy, but unconventionally grim behind its Hollywood glitz, "Feast of Love" stars Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell and Selma Blair.5/10 – Worth one viewing. See Todd Solondz's "Happiness".

The book was set in Ann Arbor (Michigan), home of the University Of Michigan and much of the 60's counterculture. The movie was shot and set in Portland. Changing the setting in a story like this is like taking a story set in 1920's New York City and changing it to modern day L.A. This was done because Hollywood film execs don't even know anything exists between New York and L.A. They cast women as men, Frenchmen as Scots, and only rarely do they get history right. If you are from another country or another planet, details like this may not matter to you. If you think things like places and people matter, you may find fault with this film.

Muddled and syrupy beyond belief, "Feast of Love" defies logic and believability to the point where the fast-forward button gets gainfully employed. Part of the problem is Greg Kinnear, who ever since "As Good as it Gets" cant shake the gay image, but kidding aside really he plays yet another lost puppy dog cliché "good guy" with pal Morgan Freeman trying to give sagely advice while facing his own past mess. The movie is an overly-trodden soap including a massive gratuity of nudity and sex trying somehow to top off the bloat of an inane script and interactions. (spoiler)The kicker is a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" situation where most if not all are somehow related and playing or watching football in a park together - kumbaya. And then a requisite jolting (death) to end on a bitter-sweet mood. Stay away.