May December

On this website, the film "May December" is listed as a comedy-drama. If there is a comic element to the film, it has to be of the darkest nature imaginable. To put it another way: This tawdry film is not like the Neil Simon comedy "The Odd Couple"!!! It is graduation day for the family of the Atherton-Yoos, as two of the children are preparing for commencement and heading off to college! But this is not your regular nuclear family ... not by a long shot! The conceit of the film is that Miss Elizabeth Berry is an actress who will be playing the role of Gracie Atherton-Yoo in an upcoming made-for-television movie. The audience follows along with Elizabeth in getting to know the Atherton-Yoos! But in one of the most bizarre scenes in the film, Elizabeth seduces Joe, the husband of Gracie. When the poor schlub says that he feels they have a "connection," Elizabeth brushes him off with the remark that this is what grown-ups do! In another outrageous moment, Gracie refuses to have a "serious" conversation with her husband about their "relationship." Again, Joe gets the brush off when he is told at age 13, HE had seduced the much older adult Gracie, and HE was "the boss." It is no wonder that after smoking a joint with his son, Joe begins blubbering like a baby and is comforted by the high school graduate! It is difficult to conceive what the filmmakers were thinking in adapting to the screen the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau. The actress Elizabeth Berry was ostensibly aiming for an accurate characterization of the real Gracie Atherton-Yoo. And yet the filmmakers completely missied the mark on the true story of Letourneau, who seduced her seventh-grade student, as opposed to hooking up in a pet store. And their coupling occurred in a car, not in a storage room. The offspring were born in prison, and the family did not live in luxury home in Savannah! The film merits 3 stars only for the fine performances of Natalie Portman as Elizabeth and Julianne Moore as Gracie in a film that is utterly depressing and unpleasant.

If there ever was an award for the most overrated film, this movie would win for sure. All the hype and praise for this film has gone way over my head; I just don't see what others have seen in it. It had absolutely no point, it's disjointed with no direction and a score that absolutely did my head in. All that music was completely unnecessary. I'm sure it will be oscar nominated, but for what, I just don't know. It didn't feel like the film was finished and there was so much more story that just wasn't told, even though the the film was near 2hrs. Apart from some good acting from Charles Melton, this was a complete waste of my time.

I remember the whole Mary Kay Latirneau case years ago, so I thought the movie would be interesting, entertaining, or at least worth somewhat good. Ha! Wrong on all counts! This was such a snoozer; we struggled to stay awake since the pace was so slow; every scene was so drawn out that it truly was hard to stay interested. The actor who plays Joe had so little charisma or charm; he was not the right actor for this role. The music was just bizarre- a bizarre, odd choice. We were constantly aware of the music since the volume always increased at the oddest times. For the life of me, I can't begin to grasp why anyone would praise this odd movie- or why anyone could rate it any higher than a 2. When I read that it made a hit at the Cannes Film Festival, my first reaction was laughter. It's like the old story of The Emperor's New Clothes. Don't waste your time on this utter snoozer of a movie!!

Do not and I mean do not listen to the obviously delusional praisers of this movie. If you want to see three people ( really two ) talk about inane, stultifying dull jibber jabber; then this is the ideal movie for you. If this played in a theatre it'd be mostly empty by the halfway point. My wife begged me to turn it off after 30 minutes. After another torturous 10 I mercifully acquiesced knowing that this absolute zero, celluloid abomination was not going to improve and in fact every proceeding minute was worse than the one preceding it. Avoid like the bubonic plague and every other disease imaginable.

After hearing a lot of good reviews about it, particularly about Riverdale star Charles Melton's stellar performance, May December became my most anticipated movie of this year. Thanks to Netflix winning its rights to release it, I can now watch it before the year ends. In May December, Moore plays Gracie, a mother with an infamous past. In the 1990s, Gracie got pregnant by a seventh grader named Joe, portrayed by Melton. As if that wasn't enough, she married him later on and they had two more children. Natalie Portman is Elizabeth, an actress who, twenty years later, is set to act the part of Gracie in an indie film based on her controversial life. Before the shooting of her film, Elizabeth visits Gracie's home to interview them and prepare for her role. May December is my first Todd Haynes film. It is a slow-moving character study of three complicated characters. Depending on the viewer, it can be tedious or it can be interesting. For me, it's the latter. The movie starts with showing the seemingly picture-perfect family of Gracie and her attractive husband. It is through Elizabeth's prying eyes and investigation that we gradually begin to learn more about the couple as the story progresses. It is hard to understand why Gracie acts the way she do, and it is exactly the reason why Elizabeth chose to play her. It is also interesting to see how Gracie treats her children, but I wouldn't delve deeper into that. Her husband Joe, meanwhile, is still a kid trapped in an adult's body. His childlike quality is very apparent early on in the film as we observe his body language and reactions. He is a caterpillar who never learned how to fly. The highlight of the movie is Joe's breakdown. Melton is this year's shocker. A butterfly is shown in the film a lot, an obvious metaphor to his slow transformation and realization as the film moves forward. It is sad to watch. Other things that I love about May December are its skillful camera works that excellently capture the characters' emotions, and a campy score that elevates the tension that is in the story. I highly recommend this movie.