August: Osage County - 1 smile

I didn’t care for the play, “August: Osage County,” when I saw it a few years ago at the Ahmanson in downtown Los Angeles and I didn’t like the movie. The Westons are so dysfunctional that, after a while, it becomes difficult to understand why these people are even in the same room as each other, much less professing to care about each other’s lives. And the yelling. So much yelling, so many arguments, so many screaming matches (that feel like monologues…….duh! This was first a play after all.) Of the dozen or so fights, one might have proved effective. But when you put so many of them together, it becomes entirely clear that long expository monologues are the predominant technique used in this movie. Unfortunately, that leaves little room for quieter, more subtle moments. And as much as I admire Meryl Streep, she overacts, virtually chewing up every scene she’s in and forcing the rest of the very able cast to amp up their acting to keep pace. The film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play about familial resentments, secrets and betrayals is a faithful, if heavy-handed, one. It’s about mean people acting ugly and it’s a challenge to get through. 1/4/14