This movie is like the world's longest synopsis. You get the general sense of what the story is about but none of the content or depth to make it worth watching. The characters get almost no time to do anything but be pounded down by the Almighty Plot Hammer. The dialog is never better than a bad daytime soap opera. And yes, there are good daytime soaps. When Days of Our Lives was about Doug and Julie and the guy who played LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes, that was some quality television. This film doesn't come close to being that engrossing. It just introduces us to people who are, more or less, arbitrarily unhappy and expects that to be enough to hold our interest. It's not.
Roseanne (Monica Keena) is a high school girl with a dumb jock boyfriend (James DeBello) and a gothy teen stalker (Vincent Cartheister) who turns out to be a Jesus freak. She also has some bitterly dysfunctional parents (Michael Ironside and Ellen Barkin). Roseanne's mom runs off with this random bartender (Jeffrey Wright). Roseanne's step-dad gets drunk and rapes her. The step-dad gets killed, someone who didn't do it winds up on trial and none of it has any impact. It just goes on and on and on and then on some more.
I've got no complaint with how Crime and Punishment in Suburbia was shot. The music is fine and scenes are well edited. I can find no fault with the cast's performances. And it's not like it doesn't make sense or is without a definable purpose. But there's no meat on these bones. It takes about an hour and a half for this movie to get to its first substantive conversation and that's mostly a monologue about teen age angst. Voice over narration is used as an obvious crutch when these filmmakers didn't have any better idea how to convey something to the audience. When the film wraps up by telling you what happened to each character, you can't avoid the realization that they could have all been eaten alive by meth-fueled fire ants for as much as you care about them.
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia is clearly one of those motion pictures that is supposed to connect with the viewer on a gut level and it's that investment which then provides the meaning and context for everything on the screen. My gut didn't connect with anything, reducing the movie to a tedious chore. If your gut is more sensitive than mine, you might get something out it. If you're bored after the first 15 minutes, though, take my advice and move on because it won't get any better.
Roseanne (Monica Keena) is a high school girl with a dumb jock boyfriend (James DeBello) and a gothy teen stalker (Vincent Cartheister) who turns out to be a Jesus freak. She also has some bitterly dysfunctional parents (Michael Ironside and Ellen Barkin). Roseanne's mom runs off with this random bartender (Jeffrey Wright). Roseanne's step-dad gets drunk and rapes her. The step-dad gets killed, someone who didn't do it winds up on trial and none of it has any impact. It just goes on and on and on and then on some more.
I've got no complaint with how Crime and Punishment in Suburbia was shot. The music is fine and scenes are well edited. I can find no fault with the cast's performances. And it's not like it doesn't make sense or is without a definable purpose. But there's no meat on these bones. It takes about an hour and a half for this movie to get to its first substantive conversation and that's mostly a monologue about teen age angst. Voice over narration is used as an obvious crutch when these filmmakers didn't have any better idea how to convey something to the audience. When the film wraps up by telling you what happened to each character, you can't avoid the realization that they could have all been eaten alive by meth-fueled fire ants for as much as you care about them.
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia is clearly one of those motion pictures that is supposed to connect with the viewer on a gut level and it's that investment which then provides the meaning and context for everything on the screen. My gut didn't connect with anything, reducing the movie to a tedious chore. If your gut is more sensitive than mine, you might get something out it. If you're bored after the first 15 minutes, though, take my advice and move on because it won't get any better.