20 - Junebug review

Ebert and I couldn't disagree much more about this one...



The family conflict film has almost become a genre all its own, taking advantage of ‘fact is stranger than fiction’ characteristics that people believe inhabit their relatives. Thinking of going home conjures all sorts of images of kitchen tiles, green grass, gray hair, vicious arguments, and the familiar house that you do not live in.

Junebug fails to parlay the myriad of emotional conflict that families face into an effective film, but doesn’t drop the ball entirely. Its main characters are not the cartoon-caricatures many filmmakers choose for similar films, but nor do they capture much interest, or provide a reason to keep watching other than that the movie has yet to end.

We see Junebug’s family through the perspective of Madeline, a British art dealer that who travels to North Carolina in order to secure the art of an idiot savant, who’s paintings are a cross between love of the Confederacy and love of pornography. Her perfect husband’s family lives nearby, so they come to stay with them.

The unit consists of a grouchy mother, frustratingly silent father, a childlike, precocious pregnant sister-in-law, and a low-life scumbag son. Madeline exhibits stunning cheerfulness and patience towards the family, who are frustrating at best, rotten at worst. Her husband mostly sits in the background as Madeline politely tries to know them. Ashley (Amy Adams), the sister-in-law, finds herself enamored with Madeline, seemingly because she has never heard a British accent and never met anyone with a smidgen of interest to them. Her husband Johnny (Ben McKenzie) displays all the interest of a dead moth towards anyone other than himself, the sort of vile scumbag who likely shouldn’t be allowed to live, much less breed. The parents possess the mindsets that many elderly find themselves in; their lives have mostly passed, so they simply shrug their shoulders and carry on with the day, be it through cooking or woodworking.

Junebug manages to hold kernels of interest and truth, but nothing that one couldn’t find during a family gathering of their own. When audiences have the option of viewing deeply challenging and rewarding films such as Capote or Munich, what role does a slow-paced family drama with no pay-off offer? My film professor often asks the question "Is this film worth doing?" I’d wager that the filmmakers of Junebug never bothered to ask themselves this question.

2 out of 5