The Architect (2016) Reviews

• Rather disappointing

  gregor-980-5082452016-11-19

  This movie is a comedy in the sense that it's not a drama. There was a certain amount of satire, but for me it was pretty much devoid of humor. Not that I require side-splitting laughter from all comedies... but a slight chuckle once in a while is not too much to expect. Toward the end, I had given up on finding real entertainment value in it for myself, and was more hoping that it would get better just for the sake of the people who made it, kind of like a cheerleader: "Come on, little movie, you can do it!" (It couldn't). I have great respect for the creators and artists involved in making independent films, with all the constraints that come with it... I try to keep an open mind. But in the end, a poorly written script kept this movie from really going anywhere. Like, anywhere. The two-sentence description/"blurb" of the movie, that convinced me to watch it was far more entertaining than the movie itself.

• Pretty Rough on Architects

  michellek102017-02-27

  If you're an architect -and I am - this film trots out every negative stereotype you've ever battled in your life and pumps it up to full volume. The architect is the comic villain in this piece: a vain, imperious, pseudo-intellectual, budget-busting, turtleneck wearing wife stealer in the classic Frank Lloyd Wright mode. Of course old FLW also had world-class talent but in my humble opinion he has a lot to answer for with the reputation he saddled generations of future architects with. But I digress. I may have found this film more amusing than most because of the many sly digs at my chosen profession, but it's still a decent comedy.

• A strange mix of the familiar and the offbeat

  davejones2016-10-12

  This is a movie with a story that, while far from being a cliché, contains elements we've seen before--the most familiar of which is the ostensibly happy suburban couple whose lives are upended by the intrusion of a stranger who causes the couple to realize that they aren't quite as happy as they thought. In the formula, one of the partners almost always welcomes the interloper, while the other is immediately suspicious. That's the case, here. This film is billed as a comedy, and it has several quite funny moments, but nothing that's going to have you rolling in the aisles. It's consistently amusing. The performances are uniformly excellent, the characters are well drawn, it's got a really strong soundtrack, it's well shot, and seems to have been done on a tight budget--a budget kept low thanks, in part, to some seamless and smart visual effects. The movie has an unusual tone--set right from the start by the animated credit sequence. The odd and arresting soundtrack also contributes to the strange tone. I doubt it will get much of a regular release (I saw it at the Vancouver Film Festival) because of its determinedly indy tone. SPOILER IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH: The script has some problems. The situation is just never pushed far enough, and the sense of jeopardy to the protagonists--the distressed couple--never becomes as dire as it should be. I was never really rooting for them, never feared for their marriage. Not because I didn't believe it could disintegrate, but because I just didn't care that much whether it failed or not. And the resolution is very weak. In the end, it seems the Parker Posey character returns to her husband not because she realizes that her marriage is worth saving, but because the architect turns out to be a fraud. Whatever happened to her complaint that her husband was stifling her? Of course, if that was the writer's intent--to point out that the couple's marriage held together only because of a lack of better alternatives--then I suppose the point is made. But it doesn't exactly leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling that a comedy is supposed to.

• Please, to all......hire a continuity editor!

  xoqpaj2016-11-25

  Absolutely bugs the @#$% outta me when any movie has obvious problems in this area. This movie is the worst I've ever seen with this issue! Watch as the robe is removed, and then change of cameras shows her with robe on. Watch as salads are removed in a huff from dinner and last leaf is attempted to be picked up by fork, but doesn't work so fingers are used...but camera change shows leaf entering mouth via fork! Sure, most don't care but this is a small thing to fix to make your movies so much better! Other than that, pretty cool and offbeat movie.

• The House of No Mirth

  tigerfish502017-02-24

  'The Architect' never reaches the level of either drama or comedy as its sit-com story unfolds with the zest of a soggy blueprint. The plot relates how a pair of prosperous married suburbanites try to paper over their differences by commissioning a pretentious avant-garde architect to design their dream house. In the real world, a village idiot would require only a brief minute listening to the pompous pronouncements of this insufferable narcissist before dismissing him as a fraud. Worse yet, the credulous couple are never fleshed out to anything more substantial than cardboard cut-outs, and their dilemmas become increasingly far-fetched as the film proceeds. It's tough to watch Parker Posey trudging through this humorless sludge when she's created so many idiosyncratic characters from unconventional material. At this point in her career, she seems better suited for the role of a scheming seductress in a noir-ish mystery, than that of an artsy airhead housewife in a lame comedy. The biggest mystery of 'The Architect' is how this sputtering slapstick-sophisticated hybrid vehicle ever got green-lighted.