As this is my first year in the Florida Film Critics Circle, it meant going out to watch a lot of big studio-produced films with major marketing companies behind them. The group announced its winners yesterday (Florida Film Critics Circle announce awards for 2012). I attended many exclusive preview screenings and received stacks of screeners at home. Some like Flight and Silver Linings Playbook even left me feeling gyped, despite the free screenings (‘Flight’ compromises redemption with sex and hilarity; Well-acted ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ offers mixed dramatic bag). Others, like the Impossible and Anna Karenina, were serious downers.
However, there was one movie that felt like a big relief, in both its tone and its low-key manner: the Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand road-trip film the Guilt Trip. It offered something refreshing not only from all the heavy-handedness of awards season films, but also for such comedies in general. Nothing big and great happens in the movie, but the humor about the divide between an adult son and his post-menopausal mother is more universal than many of us would like to admit. It may be slighter than even the trailer below shows, but it made for a delightful diversion at the movies.
It really isn’t a movie for this oh-so-serious blog of mine, so I wrote a more comprehensive review of the film for Dan Hudak, a fellow film critic in Miami who does the Hollywood-thing so well. In fact, his site is called “Hudak on Hollywood.” You can read my full review by visiting his website:
Here’s the link
Trailer:
The Guilt Trip opens today at most theaters, runs 95 min. and is rated PG-13 for its adult talk. Paramount Pictures invited me to a preview screening for the purpose of the review.
