I Melt with You (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

Simply A Masterpiece

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Mark Pellington's I Melt With You is a miserable experience. Here is a dark, dreary, morose film that takes four potentially interesting characters, soaks them in booze, drugs and self-pity and then drags us through a second act that throws them off the proverbial cliff. If we cared about these characters at all it might mean something, but they are such loathsome and self-pitying losers that we long to get away from them. The last hour of this picture is one of the most depressing experiences you'll ever have.The set-up seems to promise a much better story. We meet four guys in their mid-forties, all suffering some form of mid-life crisis. They get together at a large California mansion for an annual reunion that will last five days; this is a week that will include fishing, swimming in the ocean, partying and some inevitable male bonding. The bonding is a necessary agent to what is going on in their individual personal lives. Richard (Thomas Jane), is a school teacher whose dreams of becoming a novelist have blown away in the wind. Jonathan (Rob Lowe) is a doctor whose marriage has imploded, leaving him at a distance from his kids. Ron (Jeremy Piven) has some financial indiscretions that are waiting for him back home. And there's Tim (Christopher McKay) who is suffering the burden of guilt of a tragedy from his past.It is more or less telegraphed that all of these problems will come to a head. That's okay, but it might have seemed easier to sit through if the guys weren't constantly ingesting mounds and mounds of drugs. I'm not talking about marijuana, these guys take the hard stuff: cocaine, pills, heroine and gallons of booze. Their front living room table is covered in the stuff. They are high for nearly the entire length of the picture. They take so many drugs so often and spend so much time in a drug-induced haze that you are left to wonder how they remain conscious or keep from overdosing. At one point, Jonathan pushes a handful of maybe twenty pills into his mouth and maintains his conscious state. The drugs push one of the friends over the edge and he opts out of his misery the hard way. That opens the second half of the movie wherein misery, grief, self-pity and a long-dormant suicide pact are called into question, and what do think the odds are that they are going to make good on that very suicide pact.Pellington's visual style is to twist and turn the camera so that we feel the nausea of the drugs and of the inner-turmoil, but all it does it wear us out. That wouldn't be so bad if we cared one bit about this story. I didn't, and I wanted to get as far away from these people as I could. In fact, I wanted to get as far away from Pellington's movie as I could. Looking over his list of credits, after sitting through this and his previous efforts like Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies, I almost don't want to open anymore gifts from him.I guess some may see this as a contemporary statement on the state of the lost and wrecked lives of many middle-aged contemporary men. To be very honest, I don't know any contemporary men like this, nor would I want to. I understand the burden of having to face your responsibility and your maturity, and I understand the burden of having the face your fears, but this movie makes the pains of life into a blood-soaked vomitorium for which the only cure, the only cure, is suicide.How depressing is I Melt With You? Let me put it this way: I just saw a picture called Melancholia that ends with a rogue planet smashing into the earth and wiping out civilization. Between the two, Melancholia had the more upbeat ending.

The problem with watching a film such as this, and thinking that you could have done something more entertaining and enjoyable with the time, is that you don't know until you have watched it. You can't blame the actors for the plot as they have to earn a crust, though I did feel that Carla Gugino had to dumb down to play an officer of the law who didn't confront a clearly suspicious set of circumstances until the last moment - very contrived, I thought, as was the violent beating up of one character which had no point, and from which he seemed to emerge with only a black eye and bloody nose, no broken bones, and then played on.Putting aside the plot for a moment, the film was far too long and incapable of holding the attention, especially with the 'boys being naughty' thing going on to infinity and beyond, but maybe that is a cynical woman's point of view. A huge, huge problem was the sound and/or dialogue delivery quality; this has become an endemic problem with films and TV series these days, because either the actors are playing to and for themselves and not the audience, or the music is too loud. My hubby had to pause the film every few minutes so that we could discuss what had been said. The replays weren't always successful, so we were guessing at the circumstances past and present much of the time. We have an up-to-date smart TV with adjustable sound settings, so I know the fault wasn't at this end.Some may like the type of film that descends uncompromisingly into tragedy, no matter how unbelievable. I have a strong resistance to my feelings being manipulated by story writers, so I think about what is going on maybe more deeply than some, who are just happy to go along with the plot. This comprised the reunion of four friends who did the drugs, booze and women college scene 25 years earlier, then went their separate ways. They all appeared to have issues in their lives. One problem was clear from the beginning, one was still incomprehensible by the end, though it seemed that a subpoena was involved, one became clearer with time, and the only problem with the character hosting the reunion in his desres seemed to be that he was earning rather a lot as a teacher/lecturer? (wasn't clear) to own such a choice property.The characters snorted, pilled and drank their way through so much in such a short time that it's hard to believe that any of them lasted long enough to come to a sticky end by any other means. It isn't really clear why the police weren't called when the first casualty occurred. I never had the sense of real people living real problems, just a set of puppet characters manipulated for effect.Don't bother with a box of tissues. All you will need is an ear trumpet and a bottle of wine to get you through.

This film is truly a darker, more drug and alcohol filled version of Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill"! These four middle-aged men get together and try to relive those younger glory days in college, dealing with their individual fears and insecurities. What could possibly go wrong? Then the film goes even darker into suspense and takes this reunion into overdrive. There was a scene that had this psychedelic effect on me that really stood out and make it different from "The Big Chill".Overall, the movie was great, expect for the woman cop. Her presence didn't really benefited at all to the story. The writer could have flesh out her character further or maybe tie her to one of the other characters. Otherwise, it was a good ensemble movie to see.

I expected a lot from this movie given the cast but was sorely disappointed. The basic premise is so juvenile as to be unbelievable in 4 adult men, regardless of their problems. The suicides/deaths are so overwrought and seem to be staged to try and lure the viewer into some kind of sympathy with these guys. Didn't work for me at all. It's hard to care about these characters in any way. Perhaps if more attention had been paid to the back story, it would have made the seemingly stupid pact more believable. Unless it's supposed to be a metaphor. Which would make it even worse, if that's possible.A little subtlety might have gone a long way to helping but Thomas Jane shamelessly overacts through the entire movie and the others aren't much better in it. Don't waste your time with this one.