Main Street
- Year:2010
- Rating:G
- Director:John Doyle
- Cast:Andrew McCarthy , Orlando Bloom, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson, Colin Firth, Amber Tamblyn
- Release Date:May 19, 2011
- Distributor:Hoyts
- Running time:94 minutes
- Film Worth:$6.00
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
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.
