2 reviews
Sugar follows a guy from the Dominican Republic as he plays baseball and ultimately makes it to the big leagues.
Right from the get-go this is a boring movie. From the way it's shot down to the content it chooses to begin with, it really just isn't at all interesting. For the longest time this movie is a total drag to sit through.
It does pick up towards the last two acts, but even then it really isn't anything worth mentioning. The acting on the part of one of the actors in particular, whose name I don't even know, is terrible. She's so cringe-inducing to watch on screen, and I really hope she hasn't gone and pursued a career in acting. The rest of the cast is mostly fine, but again nothing worth mentioning.
While the story as a whole is decent, it's so poorly developed that it's hard to get invested in. This may not be a valid complaint to some, but there was way too much baseball in this movie. I know that's the central theme, but there's a difference between a movie and a baseball game, Sugar leaning closer to the latter. There's very little drama or characters of any kind in between. And no, the occasional phone call home doesn't really count, especially when it's just a conversation about sending money or how much each person misses the other. There aren't any real characters here. I will say that the one thing that the actors did right was, when two characters couldn't speak the same language, nailing the awkward silence that accompanies conversations and the way they interact.
As for the directing, it was really goofy. It was all done hand- held, which is fine when it works, but the camera man kept zooming in both suddenly and randomly on the actors when they were performing menial tasks. The directing choice to zoom in on something is usually done for emphasis, but here it's used during small talk and characters doing their job. It's just a little too goofy and frankly doesn't fit.
Overall Sugar starts as boring and, while it does pick up, still manages to progressively get worse. It's poorly directed, performed and written. My guess is that I'll forget this movie in the next few hours, and in the end I wouldn't recommend it.
Right from the get-go this is a boring movie. From the way it's shot down to the content it chooses to begin with, it really just isn't at all interesting. For the longest time this movie is a total drag to sit through.
It does pick up towards the last two acts, but even then it really isn't anything worth mentioning. The acting on the part of one of the actors in particular, whose name I don't even know, is terrible. She's so cringe-inducing to watch on screen, and I really hope she hasn't gone and pursued a career in acting. The rest of the cast is mostly fine, but again nothing worth mentioning.
While the story as a whole is decent, it's so poorly developed that it's hard to get invested in. This may not be a valid complaint to some, but there was way too much baseball in this movie. I know that's the central theme, but there's a difference between a movie and a baseball game, Sugar leaning closer to the latter. There's very little drama or characters of any kind in between. And no, the occasional phone call home doesn't really count, especially when it's just a conversation about sending money or how much each person misses the other. There aren't any real characters here. I will say that the one thing that the actors did right was, when two characters couldn't speak the same language, nailing the awkward silence that accompanies conversations and the way they interact.
As for the directing, it was really goofy. It was all done hand- held, which is fine when it works, but the camera man kept zooming in both suddenly and randomly on the actors when they were performing menial tasks. The directing choice to zoom in on something is usually done for emphasis, but here it's used during small talk and characters doing their job. It's just a little too goofy and frankly doesn't fit.
Overall Sugar starts as boring and, while it does pick up, still manages to progressively get worse. It's poorly directed, performed and written. My guess is that I'll forget this movie in the next few hours, and in the end I wouldn't recommend it.
- SquigglyCrunch
- May 10, 2017
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