"To the Wonder"

I saw the new Ben Affleck movie "To the Wonder" yesterday. What a waste of time! Granted, had a known ahead of time it was an artsy-fartsy film with little dialogue, at least I would have known what I was getting myself into. But instead I was thinking, "Hmm, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams: sounds like a nice love story!" Um, no. Not at all.

The plot is a romance story. Or, at least the main storyline has to do with a man and a woman. But the actual love part of it is difficult to see. Many of the scenes show a woman (either McAdams or Olga Kurylenko) dancing in a field with Affleck following close behind; occasionally you see Ben and one of these women rolling around together, be it in a bed or on the floor of a partially-furnished house. There is little talking between characters, just monologues in the background (mostly in French. Yay, subtitles!). But you figure between the crying and the fighting and the fact that Affleck's character flip-flops between women that this is a dysfunctional story from start to finish.

Let's just cut to the chase. There's no plot or storyline. Plus you go back and forth in time so even if there were an actual plot to follow you'd get confused anyway. All I know is that I left that movie wondering how Affleck's character falls in love with a French woman speaking very little French (i.e. none) himself, and why I spent $9 and 2+ hours watching what is essentially clips of nothingness.

The only positive of this experience is that the three main characters are well-respected, good looking actors. I saw the film in the first place because Affleck was in it; usually I enjoy seeing his face for 2 hours. Rachel McAdams is one of my favorite actresses, from "The Notebook" to "The Time Traveler's Wife"; she looks good no matter what hair color she has, and she has the perfect body. As does Kurylenko, who I never took note of before until this film, but she's gorgeous. So it's a pretty film, not just the actors but most the scenery, too (the cinematography has a big focus on nature, which is nice). So if you do want to see this movie, rent it from Red Box (or stream from Netflix; I'm sure it'll be there soon enough), put it on mute, and play it in the background as if it were a moving piece of artwork.