SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

monyfitch Sorry I had to. Btw I gave 5 stars to the movie because it wasn't what I expected. Personally I'm not into open relationships or threesome. Also it's really surreal that a mother kiss his son's girlfriend.

Armand the virtue of movie - the cast. Frances Mc Dormand,Christian Bale, Natascha McElhone. ball of situations, crumbs of humor, slices of Californian life style and music industry. heart - self definition out of others but as product of them. axis - character of Chistian Bale - scale of facts, words and strange world who gives measure of life. story is not original but solution is special. the pool is, in this case, not only a scene but one character, refuge, root, piece of unfinished relationship and kind of solitude. a good film but in strange form. ball of neurosis and fragile escapes, love as mist and place of the other in your existence, its end is just beginning. That is all !

MBunge This might have been a good film if someone had been able to say "enough" while they were making it. I'm not sure who's at fault here. It could be a self-indulgent writer/director, feckless producers, meddling studio executives or demanding actors. Whoever is to blame, there are simply too many characters going in too many directions that are too disconnected from each other. Those machinations leave too little room to explore inter- and intrapersonal conflicts that are sparked by plot devices and smothered by too much back story.Sam and Alex (Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale) are a young unmarried couple. He's a psychiatrist and she's his smarter half, going for her PHD in genetics. They move to the West Coast for Sam's new job and have to move in with his complicated mother Jane (Frances McDormand). She's a record producer trying to finish up a new CD with the band of her young boyfriend Ian (Alessandro Nivola). As Alex tries to finish her dissertation, she gets caught up in the rock-n-roll atmosphere at Jane's house and quickly morphs into a hanger on who's attracted to both Ian and Jane. Meanwhile, Sam gets caught up in a mutual attraction with an inexplicably Israeli doctor (Natascha McElhone) at his new hospital. On top of all that, add in a running battle between Jane and a record company executive (Melissa De Sousa) and Sam's attempts to help a troubled young man with a mother who's like the anti-matter universe version of Jane.Laurel Canyon isn't poorly directed or poorly performed and none of its individual scenes are poorly written. The film as a whole, though is overstuffed and undercooked. The characters have to room to breathe, the relationships have no time to grow and the overall story is never able to get anywhere. Sam and Alex's relationship is barely established on screen before they start drifting apart and since there's no way to be really invested in them being together, there's no drama in seeing that union strained. Sam and Jane are supposed to have a troubled and distant relationship because Jane is a self-centered free spirit who never really parented her son. But their family history is never more than hinted at, Jane spends most of the movie behaving in relatively appropriate ways and Sam and Jane probably spend less time together on screen than Alex and Jane. The movie tells us there's a lot of disappointment and regret between mother and son, but never explains it and barely displays because the story spends so much time on so many other things.There's also about as much depth to Ian and Jane's love affair as the average couple in a porno movie. They're together because the script says they're together and because there's nothing to that connection, there's no emotional resonance when Ian and Jane get involved with Alex. You know such a threesome is wrong but it doesn't feel wrong because you don't feel anything about any of the characters. It's really just titillating watching the sexy Kate Beckinsale romp around with the equally sexy Alessandro Nivola and the handsome Frances McDormand.Someone needed to sit down and figure out what was the point of this film. Is it about a young couple finding their love challenged by completely unfamiliar surroundings and behavior? Is it about a mother and son getting over their unpleasant past? Is it about a sheltered young woman discovering a new lifestyle and having to decide what kind of person she is? Is it about a young man who has everything he thinks he wants but then discovers something he wants something else? Laurel Canyon tries to be all of that and more. The result is that it ends up being about nothing.This certainly isn't an aggressively terrible movie, though the ending falls completely flat because the story is too busy to properly build up to it. Watching this film, though, is an ultimately unsatisfying and unmoving experience.

Michael DeZubiria It has taken me years to get around to watching Laurel Canyon, even after having lived in Los Angeles and worked in West Hollywood for a year and a half. There is more about the southern California lifestyle to dislike than can ever be explained in less than 1,000 words, and this movie takes on really just a tiny, tiny part of it, but it paints a picture of show business life clashing with 'normal' life that matches the reality that I experienced there with astonishing accuracy.Of course, a lot of the effect comes from the location shooting. Anyone from Los Angeles will instantly recognize many of the locations, particularly things like the Château Marmont hotel (where, incidentally, Lindsay Lohan lived for months and months in 2006 while she couldn't seem to stop partying enough to find a real apartment) and, more importantly, that charming cafe at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Kirkwood Drive, where I often used to go for coffee.Jim Morisson's house, a few feet away, is sadly overlooked, which is strange since the movie is about the hectic world behind the scenes of the music industry. Christian Bale plays the part of Sam, a young professional, a psychiatrist already tired of his profession and struggling to start a life with his young wife, Alex. Kate Beckinsale is the perfect embodiment of a young bride horrified by the debauchery taking place around her, as she and Sam move into his mother's house to find, to their dismay, that she has not moved out as promised, but is still there recording music with some dirty, stoned musicians. It is truly remarkable how flawlessly Francisc McDormand fits into the role of the aging mother still stuck in a rock star lifestyle. She is truly one of our most versatile actors! While the relationship between Sam and Alex is realistic and convincing enough (especially Sam's dismay at bringing Alex around his mother, and his clearly desperate need not to displease her - note the way he looks at her when he declines his mother's offer of a drink...), but the mother-son relationship is not believable in the slightest.But this, however, is not something that I think the movie is shooting for. This is not a family drama, it's a comparison of different lifestyles, sort of a peek into the craziness of show business life juxtaposed with everyday American society (the educated kind, at least), and how completely different and unmixable they are. Unmixable? Is that a word? Anyway, you get the idea. Water and oil. It's nearly impossible to imagine a smart, well-balanced young man entering his career as a psychiatrist having come from the environment that Jane (McDormand) would have provided him during childhood, but the situational drama that comes from their relationship is revelatory about both lifestyles.The actual neighborhoods and the style of the houses in that part of Hollywood are presented perfectly, thanks in no small part to the location shooting, but it also captures the attitude in many ways as well. I will say that I found the ending to be a bit sudden, but if nothing else, it's one of those movies that makes you think. You may find yourself imagining one lifestyle or the other, and comparing your own thoughts to how the people in the movie were living. It makes you think, and while I found some scenes and situations a little too far of a stretch (Sam's fascination with the darker lifestyle is interesting, but getting involved sexually with her husband's mother? Yeah RIGHT...), it's still an interesting and well-written drama.