Winslet and Brolin celebrate Labor Day together in a witless romance.
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| "You already stuck your fingers in my pie. Now, how about a taste?" |
Let me start
this by saying I knew next to nothing about this film prior to watching it
aside from seeing that it was directed by Jason Reitman and starred Kate
Winslet and Josh Brolin. That’s a fairly good start for a film and then toss in
support from Tobey Maguire and Clark Gregg and it I thought to myself that it
should be worth a look. Yeah, not so much.
Labor Day is
a very strange change of pace from Reitman, I’ve enjoyed much of his previous
work with Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up In The Air and Young Adult but this
film lacks any of the charm, wit, satire or quality of his previous works.
Things start off with enough eerie tension to make you think there could be
good things to follow but it fades fast and we’re left with a
painfully slow, dull and improbable coming of age/love story.
The film
seems to want to explore how themes of loneliness, loss and depression can be
redeemed through simple human compassion but it does so in such a peculiar
fashion that as a viewer I just wasn’t buying what Reitman was selling. Everyone
in the cast does their best to prop this ill-conceived story up but none of
them are given a whole lot of work with. At best this thing is a Lifetime movie
of the week and a really bad week at that. Winslet and Brolin are both
completely wasted here and young Gattlin Griffith, who plays Winslet’s young
son Henry, is either over matched by the role or very poorly directed. Finding
decent child actors can be difficult but this kid gives Jake Lloyd a run for
his money.
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| "Goonies never say Viagra!" |
-Brian Rohe