After failing to get into several movies, we waited for an hour and a half to see this movie at it's premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX. The crowd at the premiere was probably biased, seeing as how the movie was filmed in Austin, but most of the crowd seemed to enjoy the film.
The film provides a different sense of humor, though somewhat dark. To avoid spoiling the plot, I'll tip-toe around the exact plot. The movie provided good laughs, if you are willing to get past the weirdness of the plot content. I did spend a good portion of the film almost afraid the content was going to cross the line. There were interesting twists, and never it lets you be certain where the plot line was headed. The plot left a few rough edges, unanswered questions, and characters that either appeared out of no-where, or disappeared just as fast.
I'm not a big fan of Jason Lee, but he seemed to play his character to the letter. Crispin Glover's character really threw me at first. I'd expect him to play this character given the content of the film, what I didn't expect was his accent. It's a tough fit for him, but he seems to do a pretty good job at pulling it off. I thought the supporting cast filled in very nicely alongside of the main actors and actresses.
The cinematography was pretty straight forward with the exception of flashback scenes, which I thought were nicely done. Aside a few technically cheesy shots, the filming was done alright.
All together, I give the movie decent marks for a somewhat original and twisted plot line, bringing a different sense of humor that's worth a few laughs. However since the movie's dark humor goes against my typical sensibilities, I drop my rating a mark or so.
Overall, I give it 6.4/10 to round to an even 6/10.
