Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

Main Street (Film)

by Andrew Moraitis | May 19, 2011 15:44 | Edited May 19, 2011 15:45

This disappointingly suffers from some uninspired direction and a clutch of odd casting choices, which never work.

Few American screenwriters have such a sure feel for small-town America as well as actor-turned-playwright Horton Foote. In films such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, the late Foote lent a restrained humanism and compassion to the stories of often-broken and damaged characters searching for respect or redemption. Completed after his death, Main Street will not be remembered as one of Foote's great films.

 

Directed with workmanlike sluggishness by stage director John Doyle, Main Street is an ensemble drama centring on some Southerners struggling in a depression. Unfortunately, Foote's screenplay has little structure, jumping from character to character with only the most tenuous of links between the various stories. 

 

Main Street suffers, too, from star-driven, but silly casting, which looks better on the poster than it works in the film. Frankly, the perpetually British Colin Firth would always look awkward as a slick, Spanish-speaking executive. Same, too, for former matinee idol Orlando Bloom who struggles to convince as a young cop with a chip on his soldier. 

 

With memories of The Last Picture Show and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, at least Ellen Burstyn makes sense in this small town milieu, however, she struggles to give any distinction to her frequently frustrating character. Really, only Patricia Clarkson - possibly reprising her role as the only genuinely Southern actor in a crowd of bad accents from All the King's Men - shows comfort in her performance, registering her character's sensitivity with thankful restraint.