Diane, an uptight New York City lawyer, learns that her husband wants a divorce. In an attempt to escape from her issues, Diane takes her two teenagers along to her hippie mother's farmhouse in the countryside for an impromptu family vacation. What was thought of as a merely as an escape by Diane, quickly turns into a summer of self-discovery for everyone involved. Burce Beresford's Peace, Love and Misunderstanding is a dramedy that relies far too heavily on the hippie lifestyle to sustain its momentum. The film is built around this clash between Diane, the uptight individual, and her free-spirited mother, Grace, but the conflict of these different life perspectives is incredibly superficial and shallow. The film never really respects the hippie culture, using it as merely a comedic device which effectively strips the film of any real chance of dramatic or emotional resonance. This fact makes the much talked about return of Jane Fonda a huge disappointment merely because she is written as such a one-dimensional character whose sole purpose it to drive change in the Grace and her two teenage kids. The whole narrative is very cookie-cutter with all three principal fish out of water characters being set-up with love interests in the first 10 minutes of the movie, making the film very predictable and obvious about its general direction. Bruce Beresford's direction is horribly uninspired to the point that I found myself questioning whether he was forced to make this movie as payback for some lost bet. Honestly, I could have overlooked a lot of the dramatic missteps if the film was actually funny but sadly it's incredibly lacking in that department as well. Peace, Love and Misunderstanding is one of those unfortunate "indie" films that is no different then the stale blockbusters of today in that it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. 3/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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