Could've been so much better

The movie felt rushed to me. In the dvd extras Burns talks about how they wanted him to have a mobie for the tenth anniversary of the Tribecca Film Festival and he didn't have a movie, so he came up with this. It says it was shot in 12 days or so. They didn't say how long it took him to write it. My guess is not long.

I didn't find the characters likable at all. And if he took the time to have us learn more about them, the movie would probaly been way better. The talking head cutaways were a way to get in the character's heads more, but most of what they said was basically covred in the pervious scene, so most of them were unnecessary.

And speaking of the talking head scenes, they made no sense. He was trying to be Woody Allen and it just didn't work. My guess is that the talking heads were the characters just talking to the audience. If they were talking to a documentary crew, that would make no sense at all, because they were way too honest and in some cases mean, so everyone would be pissed afte seeing the finished movie.

But again the characters were unlikable. Ed Burns plays the same character in every movie he's in. He doesn't even try to write something different for himself. His character was the least interesting of the movie. His wife took this really bitchy turn in the movie for no reason. She save the sister attitude about not using too many towels because she hates doing laundry. The sister or Buzzy could've done laundy. I get that it wasn't about laundry. It was the fact that the sister brought a guy over, but it was too early to get so mean. If she did it again, fine. The sister and her husband, you knew they were breaking up after the first scene. I thought they were going to be comic relief and they weren't.

And people keep bringing up the budget. It's easy for him to make a movie so cheap. He got all his locations for free. He can get actors to work for almost nothing. The biggest problem people trying to make a film is that they can't afford real actors or nice locations. So to be the budget isn't the issue with this movie.

The problem is the writing. I just felt that the characters were too one dimentional. The younger sister was the only character that had any real depth or story arc. Also, was the movie supposed to be a comedy? I felt like it was, but it wasn't funny at all.

While I appreciate that Burns make indie movies, this one falls flat. It's too bad, cause if he had a little more time to work on the characters this probably could've been a good movie.