Lily & Kat (2015) Reviews

• Vacuous Dreck

  amyhall-161-9589192015-02-14

  Saw it at TIFF New Wave. I have to be honest: Lily & Kat was a steaming pile of dung and there's no point pretending otherwise. I felt a frisson of joy when it ended at the anticipated moment because I had been alternately nauseated, bored and disgusted for what seemed much longer than 89 minutes, and, while the ending was predictable, there was the tiniest chance that the director might have cut back to yet another chaotic, meaningless, self-indulgent scene. Nauseated because it was filmed entirely in hand-held shaky-cam, so that even scenes that were intended to be close, contemplative and meaningful were punctuated with a vomit-inducing twitch every half second or so. I can only hope that the director was traumatized by a camera dolly as a youth and subsequently developed a mortal fear of the things because the only obvious alternative would be that this was a conscious decision arising out of some cracked, sophomoric "artistic vision". Disgusting for its unabashed idolatry of youth as navel-gazing, drug-addled narcissists with no room in their lives or thought in their heads for anything beyond themselves, no capacity for transcendence, and not even the neurons to anticipate its existence. And who decided to show young people unironically smoking cigarettes in 2015, as if it isn't a monstrously stupid and self-destructive activity? And then to show the film at a festival specifically aimed at high school students? Boring because it was dripping with cliché characters whose lives are supposed to be meaningful simply because they yearn to create, despite the cavernous emptiness of their vision and their lives. I am always offended when a filmmaker thinks he can make me care about a character by resorting to trite "fashion designer Barbie" and "sensitive artist Ken" stereotypes. Sorry, you have to work harder than that to involve me in whatever the heck you were trying to say. What little empathy I was able to feel for the characters, and what little involvement in the plot I was able to work up, was in any case jerked away from me by frequent smash-cuts to scenes of a supposedly older and wiser Lily being interviewed by a disembodied voice while she floated against an abstract white background. I expected either that it would turn out she had died during the main action, or had been admitted to a psychiatric facility, or that Morpheus would eventually explain to her that her dilettantish career in fashion and her party-hardy nights were simply a shallow manifestation of the fact that her brain had been sitting in a jar all along. No such luck, unfortunately. That would have meant that something actually happened in the film, which was clearly not the plan. Lily & Kat was probably meant to be a personal description of the challenges involved in trying to create meaningful art while having absolutely nothing to say. It might have worked as a cautionary tale about exactly that, had it the wit to achieve self-awareness, which it certainly did not. Turns out that passing the Bechdel Test may be enough to attract good people and funding to a project but not enough to make a film watchable. I hope that director Micael Preysler will go on to do something great. I feel sure that Jessica Rothe will. Hannah Murray already has. But this wasn't it.

• Self indulgent and insignificant, Lily & Kat will just make you furious at the millennials

  ArchonCinemaReviews2015-03-28

  Lily & Kat drips with Generation Z cynicism from its directorial style, to its characters, to the hopeless insignificance of it all. Ridiculously current and screaming of 2015, Lily & Kat is a film about the relationship of two New York City females. As a film, there is not much to the highly unfocused plot nor is there any redeeming qualities in the reprehensibly self indulgent lead characters Lily or Kat. Loosely, Lily & Kat is about Lily (Jessica Rothe) as she comes to grips with her life as a nightlife hopping fashion grad turned near adult. Kat (Hannah Murray) is her best friend, a Brit with no aspirations who decides to drop Lily and Manhattan and return to her roots in London. As a film viewer, I can be quite forgiving of incorrigibly lazy and delinquent characters. In fact sometimes I even welcome it, as long as there is the balance of an impacting story or original conflict, which there is not. Micael Preysler fails to examine and explore the girls' relationships in any facet besides showcasing the events during Kat's final week in the States. The narrative is as empty as the characters themselves lacking wit and insight. Lily & Kat showcases everything that is wrong with New York City nowadays. Lily and Kat incessantly whine and boast with conceited ramblings of their pretentiously grandiose stories about their insignificant lives, constant club hopping and drug taking from boredom. Again, there is no problem with that in itself, I am a huge fan of Party Monster and other movies with similar characters. It's just Lily & Kat is terribly superficial and painfully uninteresting, and clearly a freshmen attempt at film making. Please check out our website for full reviews of all the recent releases.

• Please take that movie back... please, please, please

  sulona932015-08-19

  The only thing I liked about this movie was the music and some of the pictures. Standing pictures. The whole concept of the movie is based on the situation between those girls. Lily isn't really played by a strong actress, so the opposition to Kat has completely failed. The storyline itself is not exciting, not gripping, not very meaningful. It is a story about girls in the beginning of their twens. From my own experience I can say, that they are barely adults and that is what dominates this movie. Unrational, childish behavior. And how this plays out over the whole picture, and how it is made and woven is, subsequently observed, very poor. I would have liked the movie without the conversations and without the video. Just the music and some art-like looking stills. That would have been enough. No ground breaker, no beautiful background or relationships. Just poor judgment, despair and a little failure. Do we really need that in a medium, that is kinda supposed to let us escape from that darned reality? I almost couldn't stand it till the end. But I wanted to see, if at least that was somehow resolving or meaningful. But it wasn't. A total waste of time.

• Just go away.

  natashabowiepinky2015-04-09

  Two Girls. One, an artiste, the other a hedonist. There are best friends. Lily is American, Kat is British. Lily finds out Kat is moving to London. She's not happy. Lily also hates her job. Her cheating boyfriend.And apparently, life in general. Kat just pops some pills. Gets drunk. And sleeps with everyone who has a pulse. They have a threesome with a graphic designer. Don't worry, kids... The lights go out before things get TOO raunchy. So, the only possibly good scene in the film... RUINED. I didn't care about any of these people. Their tawdry lives. Their insignificant worries. Their non-existent development. Worst of all were the scenes where Lily talks to a fictitious psychiatrist in her head... I haven't heard such a bunch of fortune cookie psychobabble masquerading as useful advice in all my life. A complete waste of time then. Do drive home safely. 4/10

• Very unfocused, but sprinkled with realism

  rprince-832-62942015-03-26

  -Lily & Kat (2015) movie review: -This indie-flick drama follows two best friends (in NYC I think), thus the title of the film, but when one of them announces she is moving to London to follow her career. Thus drama and we have our film. -I cannot really tell what this movie was trying to be. It had some realistic elements and some comical elements, but added things that makes each element less dramatic or focused. -The story was somewhat original and something that is realistic. It really had trouble focusing on a story as opposed to drama involved in it. Which I guess is at least realistic. -The pace was good, but it had some trouble wrapping up neatly. -The two leads had some realistic acting, but some of the supporting cast fell into 'eh' realm trying to be realistic. -The characters had some depth and realism that made them compelling, but there was no build up or backstory, so you are thrown into their friendship and expected to keep up with the drama. So the development kicks off at the beginning of the film in the middle of this important friendship. -The music was trying to be The Skeleton Twins. I loved that film and not this one, so I have to disagree with the music arraignment. -Some of the editing was somewhat pointless. There are a few scenes in the film that really feel out of place and a few weird ones that go unexplained. -The realism of the film almost makes it compelling and almost makes up for some out-of-place elements, copycat music, and unfocused story. Almost. Unfortunately, I didn't find it memorable or that entertaining. I am going to say that Lily & Kat isn't worth the time. -It holds a moderate R-rating for some language and some sexual content minus nudity.