Straight A's (2013) Reviews

• Excellent movie

  matt-sickle2013-07-19

  I watched this movie with a grain of salt, due to all the negative reviews here on IMDb. I was expecting nothing and just killin' some time. I had to come back to the reviews here to double check that the negative reviews were actually for this movie. This was an excellent movie. The story is superb, like a really good short story I didn't notice the time and it was over before I realized it. I don't know if people were expecting something like True Blood or maybe reacting to some of the character's behaviors they didn't like or what. But let me tell you what, this is one well made, well acted and well directed movie. The filming and "artful" effects are done in just enough of a way that really tied it together as well. I was genuinely surprised that I had not heard of this movie before. I just came across it on Netflix at random. My conclusion is: it is a very interesting story that I found to be far more real and interesting than the last 30 big Hollywood movies I have seen... Maybe more.

• A surprisingly good low budget sleeper that deserves a bigger audience then it will get. I really enjoyed this. I say B+

  cosmo_tiger2013-02-08

  "Mom told me to come." After his mother tells him to visit the family he abandoned, Scott (Phillippe) surprises his sister in law (Paquin) and her kids. Decidind to wait for his brother to come home Scott stays and begins to form a relationship with Katherine's kids in spite of her requests. When Scott begins to act like his old self she wants him out, but he is determined to listen to his mother's advice...even though she is dead. I know what your thinking, a man hears his dead mother and listens, that can't make a good movie. You would be wrong. The acting in this is really good, but the story of each character is so well written and thought out that it really makes the movie that much more enjoyable. 99% of movies like this are very predictable and for the most part this one is too, but there is a twist in this I did not see coming, which also adds to the enjoyment of the movie. This is a surprise sleeper that is very much worth seeing. I recommend. Overall, a little low budget movie that proves good movies can be made with a good script. I give it a B+.

• An interesting near miss

  aGuiltySoul2013-01-20

  I rather enjoyed this film. It's too bad it seems to have been given a half hearted production. The film has so much going for it, but seems to have stopped short of what it would have taken to really make a go of it, namely, cohesion and a really good edit. There were some problems with continuity too. Was Scott gone 9 or 10 years because both were mentioned and it turns out to matter. Mr. Phillippe's Scott seemed to also have had a tattoo that came and went. It's those little things that show a lack of attention that reflect a failure of…what? Talent? Devotion? Funding? I don't know. But the end product is unpolished. In fact it plays better as a series of scenes than as one film. It tells the story of one family, William(Luke Wilson), his wife Katherine(Anna Paquin), and their two young children. The marriage is struggling. They have all the trappings of wealth and status but William is constantly away on business and Katherine is becoming robotic and cold, just going through the motions. The children are responding with eccentric behavior. Charles, for instance, wears a suit and carries a brief case to elementary school. There is also William's father(Powers Boothe) living nearby who has succumbed to Alzheimer's. But most importantly for this film, there is William's brother, Scott(Ryan Phillippe), who has been missing for some years but shows up one afternoon riding a horse onto the property. This film is classified as a comedy and it is funny, but in the old fashioned comedic method of amusing circumstances rather than manic behavior or convoluted plots. The comedic circumstances all center around the character of the prodigal brother, Scott. He is definitely the cuckoo in the nest of this buttoned down family. He drinks too much, smokes pot and has very little censor. He is utterly charming man, but immature and often inappropriate, especially in his vocabulary. He soon wins over the children and has Katherine struggling with feelings she once had for him. Scott has returned home at the request, he insists, of his dead mother who tells him he is needed. And except for total lack of conformity and his habit of lighting up a joint and/or a cigarette constantly as well as trying to drink the drink cabinet dry, he's not a bad house guest. However that's not how Katherine sees it, he's rather more spontaneous than she can tolerate. Yet we see that people are like moths to his flame, and Katherine is no more immune than her children. I found the acting really well done, not surprising given the cast, but the supporting cast doesn't lag behind either. (How they managed to cast a little girl who looks so much like she could be Anna Paquin's daughter I don't know.) The musical score added much to the atmosphere. I'm a big fan of well done musical scores. I've mentioned this is funny; I laughed out loud several times while watching it. I enjoyed this film. It's been a long time since I saw Ryan Phillippe act with child actors and I want to point out that he does it singularly well. Overall his portrayal of Scott drives the whole film. But I'd have liked this effort to be more than a direct to video pass off. It seems a betrayal of all the work and talent that went into it. And last but not least the ending is a really hackneyed cliché. Hate that.

• Not even close..

  roadstar062013-02-05

  This will be brief. The cast,with many quality proved works behind them can't be blamed for what is obviously a poorly directed, badly written and horrendously edited hack-job. The stunted and forced direction, film- school camera angles and poorly written dialogue are just too much to overcome for even this group of fine actors. This had to be agony for the actors to sit through if there actually was a premiere, and the wasted storyline that could have been compelling or at the very least engaging was finished off by a lazy cable-network soundtrack and bad staging. This could have been a very nice story. If this director ever gets another chance to do something like this he need to watch the last Hallmark Hall-of-Fame productions... they do this infinitely better.

• Only the Editor needs to Walk the Plank

  robdavis3812013-03-20

  The movie was choppy in places and the ending "scene" was sloppily done. Otherwise it was a charming little movie devoid of violence and gore. I don't understand the R rating as all I saw was a few curses and one joint-smoking. This movie isn't something children would enjoy anyway; it's what years ago would've been marked as M for mature. One brother brings home a girl and the other brother ends up marrying her - then many moons later the story we see begins (as the poster already suggests). Ryan Phillipe and Anna Paquin were good in this movie; Luke Wilson seemed strained the whole time, though. I enjoyed the plot, the story and the locale. I don't watch Hallmark TV novellas so I don't know anything about them; this was a sweet trip through a nice story.