Merv:
Merv is a rom-com starring Boardwalk Empire and Daredevil's Charlie Cox and Zooey Deschanel from Elf, The Happening, and TV's The New Girl. The pair have decent enough chemistry and play a couple who have decided to break up, thus causing their dog, the titual Merv to slip into depression. I'm sure you can see what that plot set-up is going to lead to, but there's some reasonable chuckles along the way. Cox is very winning, Deschanel is very good in an underwritten role, and Merv, played by Gus, would have probably been my favorite movie dog if not for the Oscar-worthy performance of Indy in this year's Good Boy.
This all takes place around Christmas where the difficult struggles of a broken relationship are accentuated by the season. Overall, it works well enough as a romantic story trying to fit iself into the guise of a holiday film.
Oh. What. Fun.
Funny enough film, the cast is enjoyable and it’s a nice edgy holiday storyline. However, it runs out of gas in the third act in my opinion, it could’ve been approached better. I would’ve liked to have seen better development with the delivery driver that Michelle Pfeiffer shares a hotel room with, after running from her family. Nice work by Jason Schwarzman and Chloe Grace Moritz here, and a not too shabby turn by Denis Leary, playing against type.
A nice touch is a scene where in order to piss off her neighbors, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character sets up and inflates Christmas blow-up yard decorations. As she’s doing so, she sits there with an evil grin, crouched down as the red light of one of the inflatables encircles her, making her look like a demon. Especially with those angled eyebrows. Nice touch by director Michael Showalter.
Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
This film is highly regarded by many, and I don't begrudge those folks their thoughts and opinions. But I was not sure I was feeling it. Nothing wrong with the performances or direction. The music design is terrific stuff. I'm not sure I felt moved like I would like to be by a holiday film. Production-wise, you could put this movie on in the background and it would serve the purpose of a digital yule log. It is visually Christmas incarnate in spades, and for that production design it deserves a major kudos.
Many critics despised Caddyshack for it being less a movie and more a string of sketches. Many of those same folks have lined up to praise Miller's for being pretty much the same thing. It's a series of events and interactions with no real through line tying it together, and no resolution to the events that had arisen through the course of the film. It felt like neither a comedy nor drama as I didn't laugh, and I didn't feel compelled by much that these folks were faced with, by and large.
No diss meant here for those who loved this movie, because it's definitely different from many recent holiday films, and you can't begrudge the filmmakers for taking a shot at doing something off the beaten path. I wasn't disconnected enough to stop watching it; however, as I was interested to the degree where I wished to see what would happen, despite most of these characters being not entirely likeable.
I just didn't find any of that out.
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