I've been dying to see 'August: Osage County' since I lived in Chicago and missed it the first time round (it premiered there before going to Broadway), well before it had designs on being made into a film. It was the only 'Oscar bait' film I was awaiting this Christmas season.
After several weeks (because Hollywood appears to think Portland is a 3rd ring suburb of Peoria), the movie finally opened here this weekend. I finally got to see the adaptation of this Tony- and Pulitzer Award-winning play.
Eh.
I have to agree with my friend Byrd who I saw it with that although the acting by most of the cast was the highlight, but the direction was as flat as the Oklahoman landscape and the sense of place was completely lost. Osage County, Iowa? Kentucky? Nevada?
Meryl Streep has her more tics than a Lyme disease-ridden forest but dammit if she doesn't nail an accent and just out-act anyone who dares come within two feet of her acting safety circle. The woman has chompers that will eat up Juliette Lewis, Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulroney and even Julia Roberts in one bite. And that's saying something; Julia's mile-wide mouth is in rare form. The stretched out lips drawn in a sharp scowl for 75% of the runtime, open to snap at her cheating husband, petulant daughter, a turkey sandwich.
The centerpiece of the film is a family meal with the whole cast that lasts for a good 30 minutes. A combo of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' meets 'Boys in the Band' for sheer malicious attacks, this is the meat and potatoes of the whole experience. The barbs shine like finely tuned knives, so everything after feels like a slowly deflating, one-hour denouement, not without moments of excellence.
More mercenary dialogue between parents and children, less running after a mother through a wheatfield. I don't think that last item was in the stage version.
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