ON DVD - The Lucky Ones Rachel McAdams is a truly underrated talent. Whether she is a devious teen queen (Mean Girls) or the fair maiden in the ultimate love story (The Notebook), McAdams is one of the few working actresses in Hollywood who is really able to disappear into her characters. Her turn in The Lucky Ones as a naïve, lower class twenty-something who enlisted into the army as a way to a better life does nothing to disprove this.
The Lucky Ones really is all about the performances. At times feeling like a stage play with its long sequences of dialogue, McAdams, Tim Robbins and the excellent (though continually type-cast) Michael Pena help create the story of three very different soldiers on leave who end up on a road trip together.
The script is problematic. The movie flirts with predictable road-trip and army movie clichés and then avoids them at the last minute. But instead of coming off as fresh, this maneuvering just makes the film feel choppy and indecisive.
But McAdams is consistent and helps save the film from utter failure. In the hands of a lesser talent, Collee would have been a ridiculous caricature. McAdams portrayal of the sweet but socially awkward soldier is deep and believable, played with enough vulnerability and child-like innocence to make scenes like the one in which Collee airs her friends’ private problems in front of a church full of strangers sadly endearing instead of just shocking or funny.
No comments:
Post a Comment