Pearl

A startling beginning brings two characters together in a smart sensitive story of alienation and love.Director,writer Bobby Roth knows about grief and violence,but he doesn't push this in your face.Rather he puts Pearl, the young girl of the story,in the care of a self loathing drunk. Sparks fly when they meet,but the two actors -Larsen Thompson and Anthony Lapaglia , as her unwilling carer, circle each other, tentatively and we dont know what to expect. The skill of the writing and the performances, leads us to some unusual places, but slowly we begin to care about these people in a surprising way. This is not a daytime melodrama or thriller, but a subtle,enjoyable tale of kindness .

The movie never really kicked into gear, as the entire story is quite dull. The characters were initially not introduced beyond the surface and as the movie progressed there were some attempts to further develop these characters. Alas, this did not only take way too long, but were underwhelming flat. The acting was so plain - the characters never shed a tear... Also, can they not at least try to look like they are playing the piano?

The cinematography was incompetent, as the camera crew could be seen throughout the movie. The directing was odd too, with constant flashbacks repeatedly interrupting the flow of the movie - even though it was an attempt to convey a characters emotions.

The movie tried time and time again to introduce a new conflict to not lose interest in the script - and it was a failure every single time, since they never influenced the story or the characters in anyway...

The ending was a letdown, and not because of the ending, but the build up. A simple run-through of the script and it would be too apparent that the movie focused on the wrong relationship between the characters...

Anthony LaPaglia was solid throughout, that's the only real positive I have here. Otherwise, this movie, with so much potential for emotion in its subject matter, seriously lacked a punch. I love indies and finding hidden gems but this was very amateurish in execution and dialogue, and failed to move me emotionally. Skip this one.

Characters were underdeveloped, the climactic point wasn't developed enough either. It just left me hanging at the end. If the movie had been given more time, it could have been truly excellent, but there were too many characters who had conflicts/things to settle with the main character, Pearl. These never got resolved at the end. At the end I was thinking, "What about the struggle with this person? The issue this person has?" Well, you don't get to know what happens to them. So although the movie could have been great, there was about a half hour or more that seems to have been cut off at the end. The movie does draw an important point: Americans are greatly spoiled, and Pearl was a great example of this. Maybe the writer was thinking in that same spoiled mind frame, not taking to account what happens to the other characters. Hence, I give it five stars for some good parts, but really that made it all the more disappointing when a couple of main characters/issues were, for lack of better wording, just thrown out the window.

The acting is so bad it's cringy. It's like amateur people trying to act for the 1st time. Story is cliche. Overall waste of time.