Review: Pretty Broken

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Title: Pretty Broken
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Brett Eichenberger
Starring: Jillian Clare, Preston Bailey, Stacy Edwards, Tyler Christopher
Runtime: 1 hr 46 min

What It Is: Lindsey Lou is a young woman running from responsibility in the midst of her divorce when her father goes missing during a mountaineering expedition. As her family mourns the loss assuming he is dead, Lindsey tries finding a way to recover and possibly rescue her father.

What We Think: Evocative of Small, Beautifully Moving Parts in that it is centered around a woman hesitantly entering the next phase of her life, this film is much more of a slower burn. This simply-shot indie often finds itself, like its protagonist, in a consistent rut with various scenes that repetitively prove Lindsey as determined to reach out to her father yet cannot be moved to change from her griping, irresponsible mannerisms. Throughout the entirety of the film there is rarely growth in character of which we get to see, thus when there finally is an improvement in her character, it feels rushed. We see more of Lindsay being immature and bothered and dysfunctional rather than seeing her learn from the circumstances she has to deal with herself. Within the meat of the picture, we find large chunks of dull, scoreless scenes often focused on the uncomfortable relationship between Lindsay and a Michael-Shannon-esque Terry Christopher playing car salesman/ex-children’s-show-star/cowboy Jerry Carlyle. To the film’s credit, it does have rare, effective moments of self-reflection and even got a laugh out of me. Despite what I feel lacks from her character technically, Clare brings a heartfelt edge as Lindsay. The cast overall delivers solid, easy-to-watch performances that I believe they would have even been great had the writing felt more natural. this one is as a whole is bland yet undeniably well-intentioned.

Our Grade: D+, While I sympathize with the effort behind all low-budget indie productions such as this, I just couldn’t be bothered to watch it again.

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