I watched this expecting some kind of chick-flick rom-com, but Feast of Love goes a little deeper than that, although the overall result isn't of the same quality of some of its individual scenes. Early on, terminal fall-guy Bradley Smith (Greg Kinnear) is sitting in a bar when the lesbian who will soon steal his girlfriend away from him asks how long they've been together. 'Almost-' his girlfriend begins before Smith interjects with the line: 'six years and a little change', and straight away you know their relationship is doomed. I like that. I like the way a writer with some talent can dispense with pages of script through the use of one well-chosen line. Shame she then goes and blows it by having kindly old Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) improbably suss the imminent lesbian relationship within a few seconds of the two women meeting.
Freeman is a good actor, but he's going to have to stop picking these 'wise old sage' roles because he's starting to become intensely irritating. Like one of the Gods he refers to at the beginning of the movie Harry sees all and knows all. Everyone comes to him for advice. One of the characters a fully grown woman seriously wants him to adopt her. People this good and wise exist only in MovieWorld (thank Morgan - I mean God), and their existence in a film is a signal that the writing isn't going to be as good as you might have expected or hoped.
Most of the characters are either sketchily drawn or stereotypes. One of them visits a tarot reader who promptly implies (quite pointedly) that her boyfriend is not long for this world. 'Go buy him some cheeseburgers' she suggests, which the girlfriend duly does. Later in the film the guy collapses and dies on a football field. If this was a comedy that might have been pretty funny cheeseburgers for the guy whose heart is about to implode but in a drama like this it's just bad and unrealistic. The guy's father is something of a psycho well-played by a criminally under-used Fred Ward: every time he disappears you just wish he'd come back again but he's scared away with a cuff around the ears from Harry the Saint.
The film is well acted by an ensemble cast and, as I mentioned earlier, there are some very well-written scenes (as well as a number of quite pleasant but largely unnecessary sex scenes) but overall the plot is too simplistic and too often has something of a soap opera feel about it.
Freeman is a good actor, but he's going to have to stop picking these 'wise old sage' roles because he's starting to become intensely irritating. Like one of the Gods he refers to at the beginning of the movie Harry sees all and knows all. Everyone comes to him for advice. One of the characters a fully grown woman seriously wants him to adopt her. People this good and wise exist only in MovieWorld (thank Morgan - I mean God), and their existence in a film is a signal that the writing isn't going to be as good as you might have expected or hoped.
Most of the characters are either sketchily drawn or stereotypes. One of them visits a tarot reader who promptly implies (quite pointedly) that her boyfriend is not long for this world. 'Go buy him some cheeseburgers' she suggests, which the girlfriend duly does. Later in the film the guy collapses and dies on a football field. If this was a comedy that might have been pretty funny cheeseburgers for the guy whose heart is about to implode but in a drama like this it's just bad and unrealistic. The guy's father is something of a psycho well-played by a criminally under-used Fred Ward: every time he disappears you just wish he'd come back again but he's scared away with a cuff around the ears from Harry the Saint.
The film is well acted by an ensemble cast and, as I mentioned earlier, there are some very well-written scenes (as well as a number of quite pleasant but largely unnecessary sex scenes) but overall the plot is too simplistic and too often has something of a soap opera feel about it.