At Any Price Review
RYAN: This movie stars Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid and it’s ok. It basically feels like three different movies: part family drama, part race car movie and then part farming movie. I liked the last quarter of the film but that’s about it.
CHUCK: I had higher hopes for the first half but then thought it all fell apart. It does become a completely different movie. I was confused by the farming aspect – something about seed cleaning, it wasn’t explained very well.
RYAN: It is wordy and confusing and all of the farming industry jargon was just something we didn’t need. But I disagree. I preferred the ending. But you really don’t end up relating to anyone in the film because they all turn out to be kind of despicable.
CHUCK: Yeah you don’t identify with any.
RYAN: I was rooting for Zac’s character at one point but only because I was into the drama. He’s pretty good in the movie.
CHUCK: If they had just focused on his story, it would have been a stronger film.
RYAN: Totally and instead it’s convoluted and there are loose ends and questions. I would have preferred to see more of his story play out.
CHUCK: But I liked both Zac and Dennis and they’re trying a smaller, lesser-mainstream movie.
RYAN: There were some problems with the pacing, editing, camera shots, and directing. It was off, long and slow a bit. Disturbing drama is one of my favorite genres and there are shades of it here but it’s not a good enough movie to be a credit to the genre.
CHUCK: Yeah there was a catalyst for a dramatic event but then it didn’t follow through to make it a really brilliant story. It happens more than halfway through the movie and then it just doesn’t tie up loose ends.
RYAN: The whole set up is off too. They appear to start off as a happy family but then almost suddenly, you find out there is tension in the family and it literally comes out of left field.
CHUCK: Right that was just one of many holes in the story. With a better writer or director, this could have gone in a better direction. And can we talk about Heather Graham? What was the point of her in the movie?
RYAN: Just to put another name in the movie, maybe? I don’t know. She caused some drama but it wasn’t really necessary. And Zac’s love interest in this, played by Maika Monroe, was terrible. She can’t act. She was, like, on a high school stage.
CHUCK: Yeah she was bad. But she also represented the simpleton of middle America.
RYAN: They all represented that but she couldn’t act. I’m sorry, you’re in a movie, be a good actor.
CHUCK: Heather Graham looks fantastic but I just thought she was useless. I like Dennis and Zac, who’s done a nice job distancing himself from the teeny-bopper image he broke onto the scene with. Dennis is good but this just wasn’t…
RYAN: It was slow, awkward and confusing due to poor writing.
CHUCK: This movie felt longer than The Great Gatsby because it was so off even though, technically, it’s a shorter film.
RYAN: I like some of the actors but really there are just so many problems in this movie that screw it up too much to be enjoyable. It’s a bit of a mess of a film so I can’t recommend it.
