All Is Bright

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source: All Is Bright

Paul Giamatti plays the lead role in this dark comedy as Dennis, a small time crook which comes out of Canadian prison after four years, just to find his best friend having moved in with his woman and daughter, and above that; they've told the daughter that he has died of some horrible kind if cancer. With no home and no family he is to survive Christmas. To finance he goes together with his best friend go to New York to sell, Christmas trees. Giamatti is great as a criminal. He looks like he is gonna snap every second, and is not very far from doing some criminal stunt. He's one the verge, you could say. Every time his friend gets a phone call... But there's obvious problems too. The music score is awful! Played in live somewhere, and should be acting as a good back ground, but it's annoyingly bad, and tedious, as well as misfired. Sad and tragic, and adds to the despair. It's a good plot, but the film is quite too slow for it's own good. This kind of comedies I've seen so much better from the Coen-brothers, or by Norwegian directors like Hans Petter Moland, Pål Sletaune, Rune Denstad Langlo or Jens Lien. The timing in this is not the same, but still there's some entertainment to find here. It's a rather pitiful Christmas story, and I had to stop watching three times because it was so boring, and annoyingly unhappy. I wouldn't recommend this, if your not a fan of Giamatti. Don't watch this if you're out for a Happy Christmas story, because it's a bleak one, both film and Christmas that is.

I really liked this film - like many of Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd's movies. They seem to go for interesting characters and quiet, realistic stories rather than sentimental or violent American claptrap. It's a movie well worth watching more than once - there are nuances and side remarks I missed out the first time. Don't watch if you are into smartarse one-liners, car chases or beautiful young rich airheads covered in heavy make-up. More reminiscent of British/European films before they started targeting the US market. The characters are neither supergood nor evil - just human and flawed like all of us. Nice one.