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Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film is up for an Independent Spirit Award, but I would be hard pressed to tell you why. This would be story is about a bunch of low rent characters rejected by Woody Allen who, while in their mid-thirties, feel like they are still on the grade school playground. The whole first act is a house party where nothing really happens. Just a bunch of background music that is too loud over the mumble core 101 dialog that goes flat. At some point we finally realize that the plot is about two brothers arguing about their father with no real back story, as well as a predictably romance gone wrong. You would get better conversation talking to your unemployed neighbor! Austin Pendleton provides the lone, almost passable personality to this two hour waste of time. Actually, ten minutes might have been too much.

Being abstract and weird is certainly not something a lot of people would like, but that's the sort of tone that The Mend works in. On one hand, it is telling a mostly simple, straight-forward tale of two brothers and their dysfunction, but on the other hand giving that description of the film would not give it enough credit at all. I read a review calling it a very confident debut feature, and that it is. Not many fresh filmmakers would attempt to hint at the pacing and balanced tone that this does, and in that respect, props need to be given in different ways. That's not to say that all of it works though, since there are instances where more restraint may have been appreciated. Nonetheless, very intriguing film.

This is the kind of film which you don't know if it's just bad or if what feels bad about it is it succeeding. This question arises for me because I think it did succeed at what it aimed to do which was to portray two brothers, how they were different as well as alike and how they fed off of each other. Though the brother played by Josh Lucas was quite despicable, I wound up not feeling sorry for the other brother because they enabled each other. The thing is, this often happens in families. Each brother had his own problems, i.e., with relationships, with work, art, and the world in general, but they both came from the same family and in the end, shared some common traits.As the other review indicates, it is a slow moving film. The things that happen are "small" and more time is spent on events than usually happens in films, but that too may be calculated for its effect.I'd recommend seeing it if you're a fan of any of the actors, and/or if you like watching psychological relationship movies which may make you feel uncomfortable, tense or frustrated. I probably would have liked it more if I felt I gained some kind of insight from it.

I hate leaving bad reviews, because I feel like you can take a little something from every movie. So I will just honestly describe this movie as "a slow movie." It's the type of movie that you would watch while lazing around at home on a Sunday afternoon, or the type of movie that you would play in the background of a get-together for white noise. I'm sure it will win plenty of awards because it does have some substance and it requires some thought in order to receive the message conveyed. But in a nut-shell, a free-spirited man-child lives without regrets or constraints. His polar-opposite brother seeks guidance and happiness all while babysitting an adult male. I recommend giving it a chance on a sick-day from work.