Brandon at Random Reviews

*spoilers*ish

When I start a movie, with very few exceptions, I finish it. If I start it and I get an inkling at some point that it’s not my kind of movie…I try and ride it out in hopes that maybe I’ll be wrong and it’ll redeem itself. This often does not pan out and every time it makes me reconsider my life choices. I especially do this with movies that are well-regarded and critically applauded and whatnot.

What the fuck is this shit? Why is this on my “100 Movies: The Ultimate Bucket List Collection” scratch-off poster my brother-in-law got me for Christmas? A lot of the other movies on it have been really good. Do I have to be 900 years old to find this story compelling or do I just need to be the blandest fucking pine cone of a person to get there?

Before we dig in to this whole 1960s Iowa-based Meryl Streep/Clint Eastwood steamy romance sort of but not really centered around fucking covered bridges aka 18-Wheeler Kryptonite…we start with Meryl’s children in present day after she’s passed who are finding out she boned some Nat Geo photographer while they were out of town with their father way back when. There is some mediocre acting by these bit-part thespians that leaves me feeling like they didn’t even do auditions before just throwing these people into the scene. Their scenes are kind of sprinkled throughout and every one of them leaves me wanting less. Do you know how many aspiring actors there are in Hollywood? The people they cast are just generally not good, alright? I feel that’s all I need to say about them.

Now don’t get me wrong, Eastwood gives a very Eastwood-y performance, and Streep is as brilliant as ever. Streep is working overtime to bring life into this vanilla-ass film and if she wasn’t here giving it her all, I would have to call this unwatchable, which it honestly isn’t. It’s just dull as all get-out. We also, for almost 90% of the film, have only these two characters to think about at all and it’s a fucking drag, man. There is not enough substance to base a whole story around, whether it’s a movie or the book this movie is based on. He’s a photographer. She’s a housewife. They meet and have off-white eggshell intercourse over the course of a few days. They’re both uninteresting people, I mean he’s taking photos of fucking bridges for fuck’s sake.

If you read this book and loved it, by all means, give this movie a shot. If have a pulse and you enjoy things that are more interesting than a plain low-sodium rice cake, avoid this one. 2 stars solely for Meryl Streep.

⭐️⭐️

“I don’t want to need you, ’cause I can’t have you.”