Yes, for this one week I moved things around in the blogging schedule. For obvious reasons. So no "Prime Time" choice this week. I'm sure Amazon won't suffer during this busy shopping period.
There are some things I just can't understand about Christmas Eve In Miller's Point. Some of the casting, considering how little they get to do. What Tyler Taormina was trying to do. Why are there two writers and a story editor credited for something that feels as if it could have been greatly improved by letting everyone completely improvise and then just putting together the best snippets from the end results.
The plot revolves around an Italian American family having one last Christmas gathering in a family home. The adults try to continue the family traditions, a number of the younger family members want to head out for a night of fun, self-exploration, and some time away from what can be a stifling environment.
Look, maybe I missed something major here, I'm happy to admit when something has some cultural or social points that I'm not very familiar with, but Christmas Eve In Miller's Point absolutely failed for me. A couple of potentially moving moments are lost in the disorganised and unfocused mess that is the rest of the film, which is a real shame. I think there could have been something impactful here about families only really being there for one another on calendar-mandated holidays, and the younger family members should have stuck around to put up more of a fight before heading out to get up to exactly the kind of nonsense that their parents would exasperatedly roll their eyes at.
Taormina, who co-wrote the film with Eric Berger, presents everything in a natural and grounded style, and he deserves some bonus points for having Christmas decorations that don't just feel as if they were exquisitely placed in each scene by set designers, but he never does enough to convey the real weight that is hanging over the heads of everyone onscreen. That wouldn't be so bad if we instead spent time with some cast members being allowed to shine, but that doesn't happen either.
Matilda Fleming does a good job in her role, as does Maria Dizzia (the two are daughter and mother, respectively, viewing the holiday period through very different eyes), but they're ignored during the times spent bouncing around the other faces. As much as I like her online antics, Francesca Scorsese isn't a good enough actress to make me feel invested in whatever else is going on. It feels as if both she and Sawyer Spielberg were given roles simply to make use of their surnames in the marketing. Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington have a couple of decent moments as two patrolling police officers, but it's distracting to consider Cera in a role that riffs, deliberately or not, on his famous turn in Superbad. Then there's Elsie Fisher, a really talented young actress who is here for no obvious reason, considering how she's sidelined. At least I can mention the younger performers though. The older cast members are all turned into one mass of babbling and mild anxiety, with the exception of Grandma (played by a wonderful Mary Reistetter).
Some might appreciate the feeling conveyed here, the cosy chaos of a large family making their way through a Christmas fraught with emotion and full of long-delayed conversations that are no longer possible to avoid, but I was hoping for a couple of stronger sequences to help me appreciate some of the individuals we were spending time with.
3/10
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