This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
A magnificent achievement in terms of cinematography, performances (Felicity Jones channelling Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows being the sole exception) and budgetary control (it was shot for less than $10 million! How!?) undone by a naff ending that just unravels into nothingness and leaves me wondering what the film was actually about.
Was it about America being hostile to immigrants? Then why does Laszlo remain in the US and become wildly successful?
Was it about the ways…
A kind of sweet, extremely low investment film that suggests the radical-to-2000s-Disney idea that regular-looking (or in this world "ugly") people deserve love and happiness too.
Seeing the 1950s pretty characters rendered in soulless straight-to-video digital animation is kind of weird, but not as weird as the prince pulling a Bug's Bunny blur-dash through a window towards the end.
They call this slow cinema. "Slow" implies both movement and direction. This is static cinema.
I feel like a bit of a shit ragging on this film, because it was made by a 19-year-old, and there is genuine talent shining through it. That said...
Look, there's genuinely good stuff in here: a few good laughs, some nice visuals, and Alice Maio MacKay gets great performances out of a mostly good cast.
But the script is kind of a mess. We're almost halfway through the film before someone outlines our heroine's big character flaw, and past…
