FilmSnobReviews

Title: Maps to the Stars
MPAA Rating: R
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins

What It Is: A series of events is unexpectedly occurring around two central characters Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird) a child star responsible for the box-office smash Bad Babysitter. Likewise actress Havana Segrande (Moore) is simultaneously having a breakdown while trying to play a role made famous by her mother who died very early on in Havana’s life. As this stress continues on to her she (much like Benjie) is seeing images of things and people that are not there. For Benjie he is being haunted by a young girl whom he visited in the hospital, and Havana is being haunted by the apparition of her mother. here is a thread between these two besieged characters you see Benjie’s dad is renowned celebrity therapist Stafford Weiss and one of his clients is Havana. But when a strange girl comes into town and is Havana’s new assistant everything is going to change.

What We Think: As is the case in any film with the words David Cronenberg around them it’s a bizarre film. One about terrible people whom you are not going to like. Having said that their journey’s are interesting, but above all strange. It’s built almost like a satire, but lacks the bite to fully digests it’s subject matter. Hollywood is the target and it somewhat gets it’s point across about everything from childhood stardom to the ennui and depression of success and failure in that town. Performance wise there’s nothing extremely good, nor anything cringe-worthy, except perhaps Olivia Williams going from bored to needlessly (and unexplainedly) crying in a bathtub with subtle not being an operative word.

Our Grade: C+, It’s not a bad movie but it is beyond great. There will be some who say I “didn’t get it” but I got it I just didn’t care what it had to say. It’s certainly a bold movie, but one whose payoff is seemingly evident, and whose “major twist” seems to have been a fact from the start. None of the “shocking turns” have any effect and that is unfortunately Cronenberg’s fault. Rarely will I say he telegraphed his setups, as he normally does not, but in this case it was sadly a situation of too much narrative without exposition.