WAKING UP IN RENO
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If your lifelong dream is to see Natasha Richardson get dressed up real purty and talk Southern, this is your movie! Unfortunately, that only happens at the end of the movie (well, she has the accent the whole time). You know how mystery writers are supposed to start with the ending, and work backwards? This movie isn't a mystery (excluding the mystery of how it got made), but I would suspect that the ending of this film was written first, and got the best of the creative energy. The last fifteen minutes are pretty good. Or at least, better than the preceding seventy five minutes.
It's like visiting the Southern relatives with which you have very little in common. Not to give away too much, but this movie revolves around two married couples, and the boundaries of their relationships get a bit fuzzy. They each have to go through personal growth and epiphany on a vacation from Arkansas to Reno, hence the "Waking Up" symbolism suggested in the title. Key points in formula screenwriting are present; conflict, personal growth and sex. The characters' bad habits are a bit cliché and annoying, but not as horrid as Randy Quaid's character in the "Vacation" movie series. Unfortunately, their Southern charms didn't make me care enough about them to feel any real concern about whether they'd resolve their problems. Aside from really, really liking Natasha Richardson's Southern drawl, most of the time was spent waiting for the hillbilly relatives to just go home.
If you liked the movies below, you'll probably like this one (and vice versa):
Eight-Facet Info Rating, rated on a scale of 0 (None) to 4 (Lots!)): |