{"id":41707,"date":"2023-11-08T01:46:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T06:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=41707"},"modified":"2023-11-08T01:46:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T06:46:09","slug":"open-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/08\/open-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Open (2023)\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A couple opens their marriage only to find out that it may not be for them while dealing with an obsessive former teen heartthrob.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Written by Miles Doleac and Lindsay Ann Williams, and directed by Doleac, the film is an odd mix of character exploration, romantic comedy, drama, and music video. There is a whole lot here and some of it feels completely out of place. While it\u2019s not bad, it\u2019s fairly good even, some of the elements just feel like they belong to a different film, especially the music video-like hallucinations from lead character Kristina. The film feels a bit like a bunch of ideas thrown together to see what would stick around a central story that works just fine on its own. The way the subjects of open marriages and pregnancy loss are approached is done in an interesting way, but the style of the hallucinations makes it all come off as very much un-serious, like these subjects (especially pregnancy loss) feel like they are undermined by the musical comedy aspect and a lot of unnecessary tonal shifts. There is a solid story here, but it sometimes feels lost in the rest of the scenes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cast does well here in general. The musical performances have some odd choices throughout, but as mentioned above, they feel like an odd choice in general, so their performances feeling off matches the energy of the material as written. The two leads here played by Miles Doleac and Lindsay Ann Williams who wrote their own parts for themselves are part of the stronger performances here. Jeremy London gives a fun performance that goes on the side of unhinged here and there to say the least. William Forsythe does well as the Police Captain, but when it comes of taking part in the hallucinations, he feels quite out of place. And that is a major issue with the film, coming back to the musical performances, the music video-like hallucination sequences. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cinematography by Nathan Tape creates images that work within their scenes, creating a dichotomy between the more serious parts of the film and the hallucinations once again, but in the case of Tape\u2019s work it means that the work was done well and with attention to detail. Both styles used here look good, the more serious style works with the scenes it\u2019s applied to and the music video style is very much lower-budget-80s music videos (think not exactly made for MTV, maybe made for MuchMusic). <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Open is a decent film with some scenes that feel completely out of place, there is a good story in there, but it gets bogged down by the musical bits. The film ends up feeling like 2 different films mashed up into one without worry about style or tone. Overall, it\u2019s entertaining, but the music videos break down the story in a way that hinders it. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple opens their marriage only to find out that it may not be for them while dealing with an obsessive former teen heartthrob.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,302,700,1087],"class_list":["post-41707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-musical","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41708,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41707\/revisions\/41708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}