Word: screens
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...girls-only book club, but this film is far too clever to be derailed by such trivialities as believability.) Similarly, Beth trades men like Daniel trades personalities. It seems Tommy’s job keeps him too busy to hang out every single second of their screen-time, and so naturally she gravitates towards the only other male character in the story. Oh, and in case it’s not abundantly obvious, all-American Tommy is not what he seems either. At one point, in a particularly egregious move, the film even has him lie to the audience...
...Good Guy” is, in a word, contrived. The people in it are props, with actions dictated by the director just as much as anything else on screen. In this way, the film manipulates its characters, its plot, and its audience to teach a pseudo-sophisticated moral about how being true to one’s self is a greater pleasure than all the money, luxury, and girls that charm can buy. “The Good Guy” forgets that it’s hard for a film to preach integrity when its script has none...
...meaning Fish achieves with the present-day setting is negated by the baffling stark and technological aesthetic he forces on the show, which works against the script rather than with it. Videos projected onto a gigantic screen throughout the production are particularly off-putting. Even when the video works in a technical sense, it is distracting, unnecessary, and alienating. This is no fault of video designer Joshua Thorson, whose work is actually quite charming by itself. Rather, any video—even as engaging as Thorson’s—simply makes no sense here, where...
...video is particularly unfortunate when three factory workers visit patriarch Leo Gordon (David Chandler) and his business partner Sam Katz (Jonathan Epstein) to complain about their conditions. The unseen workers lodge their complaints, speaking into off-stage microphones while the screen plays clips of silently talking everymen. The effect is sloppy and confusing. If Fish is trying to equate the three workers with modern employees and their struggles, he certainly does not succeed; it is barely discernable what is actually even happening in the scene...
...introduction of law enforcement officials, whose own battles are then interspersed with testimony. Each witness’s deposition is even separated into a new chapter, much in the same way that “Law and Order” introduces a new witness by calling up a new screen with a characteristic two-note segue...