3 Days of Normal

"Slight" is the word that springs spontaneously to mind after watching this tiny and trite, almost microscopic film. It feels more like a long preview of something better than a completed piece of art and we are left waiting for and wanting something, anything to seriously surprise or deeply delight us. Very little ever occurs at all, no characters are layered, or unpredictable or transformed, and much of what action there is is transparently unreal and therefore uninvolving. And yet, movies like this deserve their due faint praise, if for no other reason than that they successfully rise above the great and nearly constant morass of truly gaggable junkwork that so many current features seem to be made entirely of. It is not awful. It is peaceful and pleasant and pretty throughout. No jiggly camera, no cartoonish sex or antihuman violence. The acting and production is professionally competent. I'm almost grateful after having seen it... it didn't hurt me. It didn't empty my soul or defile my mind, and these days that is almost enough for a recommendation. Almost, almost. When just not being betrayed by a movie feels like a needed gift... what does that tell you about where we are in cinema today?