 Director:
Michael Mayer
Starring:
Colin Farrell
Dallas Roberts
Robin Wright Penn
Sissy Spacek
Matt Frewer
Release: 23 Jul. 04
IMDb
|
A Home at the End of the World
BY: DAVID PERRY
Castrated by both the movie studio and his onscreen
development, Colin Farrell’s Bobby is the epitome of the man-child,
hopelessly going through life trying to make everyone happy so that they’ll
love him. It’s not a particularly attractive roll for the Hollywood hunk,
but this isn’t a particularly attractive movie. In fact, A Home at the End
of the World is the epitome of bad indie filmmaking, bringing to mind the
two gay cowboys that South Park imagined all independent filmmaking to be
about.
No matter what subgenre it compares to, this is a lesser variation. The love
triangle has no tension, the main romance has no chemistry, the gay elements
are simplistically rote, the urban story is laughably unbelievable, the
rural story lacks substance, the arrested development is barely explained,
and the father-son dynamic is quickly forgotten. Even in the collected works
of Michael Cunningham, writer of The Hours, this is the worst (I happen to
like The Hours, but I doubt even that film’s critics would consider it the
lesser).
Scantily put together on a shoe-string budget that shows, A Home at the End of
the World lacks any understanding of tone, articulation, or storytelling to
impart in its vacuous 95 minutes. Here’s a film that jumps from scenario to
scenario but never really understands that it hasn’t explained the first
scene yet. People will still go to this in larger number than it deserves
because of the ballyhoo over Farrell’s evidently large penis being trimmed
from the final cut (I find all these circumcision puns oddly humorous when
used for an actor who prides himself in being uncut), which is unfortunate:
with the sudden cut in the film as Robin Wright Penn takes off Farrell’s
pants, even the post-production tinkering is amazingly obvious.
 |