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Typically, this early in the awards season, I tend to revel in the anticipation of it all. Sure, there are always a few unpleasant surprises, but it’s still so new and exciting. Magical, even. You never know when the next movie will be the best movie of the year—or when the next actor will give the year’s best performance. By December, all that wears off—and I’m left feeling burnt out and cranky. But in October, everything’s still exciting. Or at least it’s supposed to be. This year, however, I’m a bit concerned—because it’s much too early in the awards season for me to be this indifferent about so many Oscar hopefuls.
The latest ho-hum hopeful, Reservation Road, tells the story of two men whose lives are changed forever by a hit-and-run accident. When Ethan and Grace Learner (Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly) make a quick pit-stop with their two kids at a gas station near their home, their ten-year-old son wanders too close to the road, where he’s hit by a swerving SUV and instantly killed. The driver hesitates—but then he races away from the scene.
The driver is Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo), a lawyer who’s returning home after spending a rare day alone with his own son, Lucas (Eddie Alderson). When he hits the boy, he fears that it would mean losing his son again. But it’s not easy for Dwight to hide his crime—especially after Ethan Learner shows up at his office, asking for his legal counsel to help him find the man who killed his son.
The best movies—the truly award-worthy ones—are the ones that make the audience feel the story. They make you laugh…or cry. They make you feel like you know the characters—that you understand them. You feel their joy…or their pain. And a movie about a man who’s mourning the devastating loss of his son—and another man who’s suffering from the guilt and shame of his responsibility for that death—definitely should have made me feel something. But it didn’t. Believe it or not, I got a little bit choked up while watching Lars and the Real Girl—a story about a guy and his life-sized doll—but Reservation Road left me completely dry-eyed.
Perhaps that’s because not one member of this marvelously talented cast is able to give a really solid, convincing performance. None of the grief feels real; none of the emotions feel genuine. It’s heavy and exhausting (and often obvious), but none of it is compelling. Mostly, there’s just a lot of yelling and a lot of overdone hysterics. And while Phoenix tends to give brilliant performances as unstable characters, this time, the more unhinged his character becomes, the worse (and less believable) he gets.
Though the acting isn’t the best, the writing definitely doesn’t help. It often shoves its point down the audience’s throat. And, at times, the dialogue is painfully unnatural (Have you ever heard a kid call someone a “no-good coward”?).
But what it all comes down to is this: nothing about Reservation Road feels real. It just feels like a bunch of actors telling a made-up story. And where’s the magic in that?
