FilmSnobReviews

Title: Serena
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Susanne Bier
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Rhys Ifans
Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins

What It Is: It is the Smokey Mountains in 1920’s North Carolina. George Pemberton (Cooper) is a newly married owner of a logging company responsible for supplying wood around the United States. His new bride is the exhuberant Serena (Lawrence) and the two of them run the business together. As former infidelities, incoming corruption charges, and a want by the government to turn the land into a national park things start to splinter ever so. With a sherriff coming after them and an unpredictable man on the loose working for them (played by Rhys Ifans) Mr. and Mrs. Pemberton must (continue to) do whatever it takes to stay afloat.

What We Think: What an atrocity! People may ask themselves how JLaw and BCoop could fail so hard on this and it is very simple…this one wasn’t on them. From an editing standpoint this is one of the worst put together films I’ve seen in a long time. Terribly edited and barely strung together. In addition the script was awful and at times seemed on the verge of becoming overly melodramatic. There’s a great cast outside our two primary players and they are extrordinarily ruined Ifans, Toby Jones, and David Dencik all just flar uninteresting and caricatured to the point of embarrassment. T

Our Grade:F, This is the worse of Lawrence and Cooper’s careers and I assume based on the duos talents that is where it will remain. There’s some great story elements that could’ve been great had they been further developed but I believe this thing just has the wheels fall off of it, and no one was there to put them back on.