A review.

For Ellen is flat-out boring until the third act. Dano's character has no redeemable qualities, nothing to give an audience to root for. He manages to be self-loathing and self-pitying at the same time, while giving the audience no clue of his softer side (which only comes into play once he finally sees his daughter, too late in the proceeding for anyone to care at that point).
The endless establishing shots add nothing to the story, and too much time is taken up where absolutely nothing is driving the movie forward. We get it, it's winter, it's cold and he's isolated in the middle of nowhere. Those facts don't need to be pounded into the viewers head over and over.
More could certainly have been made about the dynamic between Dano and his ex-wife. Why wouldn't she talk to him when we first meet her? What ultimately drove them apart? How long had they been apart before the divorce papers came into play? Some of this information would have been helpful for us to see what motivated Dano's character to behave the way he did. I was also curious as to his relationship to his lawyer. Were they friends previously? Why would he invite him to dinner?
I wanted to like this movie (I was a huge fan of Ruby Sparks and of Paul Dano and John Heder), but I nearly turned it off before the final scenes between father and daughter because it was so incredibly dull. I'm glad I didn't because it did have somewhat of a payoff, but it was mostly due to Sheylena Mandingo's performance, and not the cinematic stylings of its director.


"She's, like, a biscuit older than me..."