Catalyst Castle

In the Land of Women will be my first truly negative review on this blog. The premise for this drama sounded like it might have potential. The movie starts out with Carter Webb, a young man from Los Angeles, being dumped by his girlfriend. Wanting to get away from things, and learning that his grandmother thinks she’s dying, he travels to Michigan to care for the elderly woman. There he befriends the Hardwickes, a woman and her two daughters who live across the street. Their relationships move everyone involved to gain a new perspective on their lives.

So, that’s the basic premise, but the film fails to deliver. I was going to write a synopsis of the movie in a paragraph or two, but I changed my mind. It’s not worth writing. What happened? It really doesn’t matter. The characters are underdeveloped and generally unappealing. The family drama falls flat somehow, and most of the relationships that develop seem awkward or unrealistic. I don’t see how the main character makes any significant changes by the end of the story, or how he’s really affected by the things he experiences. It’s really hard to say what the movie was trying to convey. It did absolutely nothing for me. It wasn’t touching, or funny, or anything. It wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t good. The only thing I really enjoyed was one scene where the teenage daughter of the family next door is painting in her basement. She paints a neat picture on this really big canvas. It was a very minor scene, but it made me want to paint again.


Roleplaying
Because of my obsession with roleplaying games, I tend to watch most movies and shows with an eye for what I could take from it and apply to gaming. Sadly, I found nothing inspiring about In the Land of Women.