Get Low – 4

For all appearances, a vanity project for Robert Duvall, who played a character we’ve seen him play many times before, interesting as a sideshow but not the main feature. Bill Murray’s character was the only one with any hint of complexity, but the highly superficial story hardly let him develop it. The story itself made no sense, so I wasn’t surprised to see in the credits that it was based on real events. Why did old man Bush want a funeral at which he could hear people’s stories about himself? Why was it even called a “funeral”? Why should we believe that Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall were of similar ages? How did Bush make his money? Why was the Rev. Jackson such an intimate? The film offered two scenes to justify Bush’s reputation as a mean old codger, but Duvall never came across as scary – viz., his “Beware of Mule” sign. Part of the problem was how this movie compared to Winter’s Bone, where life was truly primitive and people in the woods were indeed frightening. By contrast, Get Low was just a Hollywood storyboard.

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *