All I See Is You

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Marc Forster has crafted a career of making movies that are readily watchable, though for the most part, not especially memorable. These include: FINDING NEVERLAND, STRANGER THAN FICTION, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, WORLD WAR Z, and his best film, MONSTER'S BALL (2001). His latest falls short of those, but thanks to Blake Lively and some creative visuals, we remain interested enough.

This is Ms. Lively's follow up to last year's surprise summer hit THE SHALLOWS, her nearly one-woman sea-based spectacle. This time out she does an admirable job of carrying the film in spite of script flaws. It's co-written by Sean Conway and director Forster, and despite teasing some fascinating psychological aspects, we find ourselves constantly waiting for the movie to show us what we already know is about to happen. Predictability is rarely an asset for a film, and here it acts as a ball and chain to the pacing.

The first third of the film works to establish two things: what Gina's (Lively) daily life is like as a blind person, and the type of relationship she and her husband (Jason Clarke) have. We get an abundance of distorted light flashes to simulate what she has lived with since the car accident that took away her parents and her vision during childhood. Her marriage finds her very dependent on her husband and Clarke's character thrives on this … even giving brief glimpses of his demented personality that will eventually take over the film in the final act.

Gina's doctor (Danny Huston) performs a transplant which successfully restores her vision. The bulk of the story revolves around the changes that vision brings to her life and how the marriage begins disintegrating. The best message here is what happens to a relationship as the individuals change and evolve. Specifically in this case, the wife gains an entirely new perspective, while the husband longs for the days where she was dependent on him.

At times it feels as if director Forster is working hard to create the look and feel of an experimental movie, rather than focusing on the story. There are some interesting visuals provided by locations and camera angles, although the moody atmosphere never really clicks. Ms. Lively singing "Double Dutch" provides an ending that is both odd and mesmerizing in a strange way. We are reminded that evil and self-centeredness can take on many forms, though this film never quite packs the dramatic punch it should.

Time to tell you how bad this film is. I didn't know much about it but I really like Blake Lively. Ever since the Gossip Girl days I've been interested in seeing more of her. The Shallows might be ridiculous at times but she's good in it and does show effort to her role. The same can be said for her commitment to this film, however its a shame everything else about this film lets her down. Its definitely a "what the hell did I just watch" film.

The film is about a woman who is blind and has surgery to repair her vision. Once this happens her husband starts realizing that she knows about how attractive and appealing she is and becomes concerned with their marriage falling apart and her being pulled out towards other relationships. That's really whats going on. Along the way she starts losing her sight again along with her relationship. And then there's a what the heck moment with an incredibly stupid ending.

The film does a good job of portraying eye popping visuals for what Lively's character sees when she is blind. The foggy, ever changing, and almost psychedelic visuals of her vision are quite nice to look at. As mentioned earlier Lively is good in this, but everyone in this film is unlikable. Lively's character isn't worth redeeming, Jason Clarke' s character is mysterious, like was he even good or bad? There's a lot of weird awkward moments dialogues about dicks and a very weirdly creepy brother in law. Yikes.

I want to say there was potential here but about twenty minutes in you realize that its just wasted time. I want to see Lively in something better with a good filmmaker to bat. This is just a frustratingly bad experience because we have a frustrating director at the helm. Its quite stupid at times, you may want to check it out to see if you can form a different more positive opinion about it. Honestly though, its better to not "see" this one.

5/10

If you like a movie full of soft porn and characters that leave you emotionally numb then this one is for you. I truly like Blake Lively but felt this was a waste of time for her. And then the plot was so muddled you didn't know what was going on half the time. I like a good mystery and artsy films but this one just leaves you befuddled. And good luck deciphering the ending because that was the biggest mystery of all....altogether a disappointing flick.

I only came to the knowledge of this film's existence by browsing through Blake Lively's IMDB page, and was frankly shocked to see the unbelievably low number of votes (in the 600s at this time). Even more so, I was flabbergasted when I saw that this film carries a production budget of $30M and only managed less than $1M in its limited theatrical run. Usually these numbers indicate a huge bomb caused by universal dislike from the critics and the general audience, but judging by the ridiculously small amount of votes here, the complete lack of exposure of any kind it indicates, and the mediocre scores, this is also not the case. Curious, I watched this film, and now I think I can see why.

All I See Is You is an underwhelming film with a weak story and is also a creative misfire, in the sense that it does not present itself in any way as a coherent package with a clearly defined target audience. As a drama film, the film's mainstream appeal is clearly far from wide, and it isn't anywhere close to being experimental or avant-garde (not to mention no sane producer/investor would greenlight a arthouse production at even 1/10 of the budget of this one).

Narratively the story is loosely written with a slow pace (especially in the beginning) that doesn't allow the film to gather much momentum. When the screen isn't showing you a scene that's clearly a part of the main storyline, I couldn't even ascertain if what I was watching was going to be developed into a subplot, or if it's just a random scene depicting a random minutiae that fills the screen time. I did not watch this movie expecting that I'd be hugely entertained, but it should have been obvious to the filmmakers that intercutting narratively unimportant scenes with random flashbacks is clearly insufficient to keep the audience interested, when the main storyline is so thin. When moments of drama finally arrive, they lack the originality, or the creative punch that comes with a well thought-out, well executed plot point, to really surprise and satisfy viewers. There's hardly any momentum building as the story progresses, which explains the lack of tension I felt when the film reached its supposed climax.

Visually, this film simply contains too many shots where the cinematographer seems to be trying very hard to bring to the screen the blind girl's view of the world, all in a very impressionist and therefore distracting manner. In my opinion this was overkill, and it ended up creating an overall look that's more gimmicky than beautiful.

It also conveyed a sense of alienation to me, as it made me want to talk to the screen, 'hey, I'm not blind, that's why I'm watching this, so could you please stop showing me what the world may seem from the blind girl's perspective (not to mention that that perspective should be pitch blackness if she was really blind) show me something that's actually interesting, like the actual story.'

Instead, one can edit out all the shots of this type in this film, put them together, and you'd get a fine contender for "32 potentially interesting short clips for my Windows OS screensaver" or "video to play on the big screen at a Blur concert". It wears off rather quickly and becomes tedious after the initial novelty. I also find that parts of the soundtrack to be at odds to what the scenes were trying to portray.

With a medium sized budget for a drama film at $30M (which means the producers were obviously expecting a wide theatrical release and for the film to not be a flop for that kind of release, in order to stand a chance at turning a profit), some of these creative decisions are simply baffling.

In fact, you can go check the production budget for most of 2017's Oscar bait films, like 3 Billboards, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water etc, and these films all have roughly the same level of production budget as All I See Is You. It really is mind-boggling. I'm not saying the end product is too generic. In fact, I do suspect that, had the film been made in a more by-the-book standard Hollywood fashion, it likely would have gotten a better result.

Well, it can hardly get worse than the current situation, where the box office is practically negligible against the costs. I still find it really hard to believe the number of votes here, which suggests that practically nobody except those who literally came across it/stumbled upon it have seen this, which is quite ridiculous, and as a Blake Lively fan, I don't even know how she would feel about accepting this role as the follow up to 2016's surprise hit The Shallows.

I get it that the very idea of 'what if a blind girl recovers her sight somehow, and discovers that the world isn't quite as she thought it was' is a novel one and has potential, but that idea ALONE can only support a short film, granted it can be a very interesting 15 minute vignette if done well. The filmmakers simply failed to expand on the central premise here, and what we get is a feature length film that is a bore to sit through.

All I see is a film school thesis movie that should have been failed and forgotten. Instead, the director's lust for Blake Lively led to a near pornographic experience that lacks any satisfaction