Fantasy Life

This relies way too much on characterization alone, but the characters are not as charming or funny as the director seemed to think, and they're certainly not enough to carry a viewer through without an engaging story. Even so, other characters, such as the girls, remain completely under-developed except for the shallowest descriptors (the yeller, the gamer, the homeworker). Their relationship with their Manny was never explored either. When so many things get pushed away to the subtext, you start wondering whether it is even a subtext thing or just lack of cinematic rigor. The whole film just felt like one long buildup, where I kept on waiting for the plot to thicken or for anything of interest to happen, which took forever and was quite a disappointing event, if you can even call it that. I did appreciate the cast's superb acting skills, but it's not enough on it's own. And generally, I just feel like that whole anxious in New York theme has been so overdone, that if you are choosing to do it once again, you just have to bring something new and interesting to the table.