hampersnow-41369

The Ugly Stepsister begs comparison to The Substance, but while The Substance is an excellent movie, this film is very good but just never makes it to great. A horrific retelling of Cinderella, but not from Cinderella's point of view, this is a movie that obviously has something to say about not only beauty standards but standards in general. It's filled with scenes that are hard to stomach and amazing special effects that will have you squirming or covering your eyes. Lea Myren is pretty incredible in the lead role , but all the actors are wonderful. It has some explicit scenes too, this is definitely not for children. My only problem with the movie was in the handling of the lead character. It seems the writing and directing during the film took the lead in directions that didn't make sense to me. Do not expect a straight forward Cinderella. Do expect to be sickened.

With a score of almost 7 and many glowing reviews maybe I was expecting too much. Moby Dick is a classic, this movie is not. Directed by Ron Howard who has definitely made better movies, In the Heart of the Sea has a fake look to it that just always had me thinking I'm just watching a bunch of Hollywood actors acting and in many cases acting poorly. Chris Hemsworth seems to be stuck in some superhero movie and really brings this down. Benjamin Walker, an actor I've never heard of does a good job, Tom Holland mostly succeeds but Frank Dillane is genuinely awful as is Charlotte Riley. Cillian Murphy is usually good but not in this. Everyone seems though like a modern actor in a bad play. At the beginning of the film accents were so bad I had no idea what part of the country the characters were suppose to be from and those accents come and go. The script stinks, in fact the only thing I can give the movie credit for is some great visuals. I'm watching this 10 years after it was released but it has all the markings of modern bad Hollywood.

Abby Miller (writer) and Michael Patrick Jann (director) have created a movie so awful I could have sworn it was made in Canada. Actually it was made in Oregon, but it's a disaster just the same. I'm sure Miller thought she was writing something deep and profound. Instead this film is like watching a movie made up as they went along. Scenes do not flow, some have no relation to the next, the script makes no sense and neither does the movie. I have no idea what I just watched. Inappropriate comic bits were included that not only added nothing to the movie , they were painful to watch. Ethan Embry was doing his best, but the character he was given to play was all over the place and by the end of the film, although I have no idea when it was shot, his acting had deteriorated to poor. The casting was off with the real life son of the director playing Embrey's son although they looked nothing alike. The wolf costumes were dreadful and it all looked cheap. This was a total waste of time. I am not sure if the writer or director is more to blame here, but there is nothing here that even touches on reality. Characters are straight out of a cartoon and there seems to be no clear vision on what this was suppose to be , so it just fails at being anything at all.