Review: American Pastoral

David Strathairn attends his 45th high school reunion and becomes curious as to what happened a guy named Swede Levov after running into his younger brother (a dreadful Rupert Evans) at the reunion. Swede recently passed and Evans tells Strathairn the tragic tale. Ewan McGregor plays Jewish-American ‘Swede’, married to a stunning former beauty queen (Jennifer Connelly), and father to a rebellious daughter (Dakota Fanning) who gets caught up in the anti-Vietnam War movement of the late 1960s. Molly Parker plays a well-meaning but seriously misguided psychiatrist.

 

First-time director Ewan McGregor doesn’t make it easy for himself by tackling the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Philip Roth with this 2016 drama. Unfortunately, Ewan really isn’t up for the task with this extremely silly film full of absolutely dreadful dialogue and unconvincing performances. Adapted by John Romano (“The Lincoln Lawyer”, the infamous “Cop Rock”), in terms of plot and themes there’s some interest and potential here, however this should’ve and could’ve been a whole lot better in the execution.

 

Jennifer Connelly has been a favourite of mine since about 1990 and has given some fine performances, here she gives one of her worst, not at all helped by some of the most inorganic lines in the film. It’s with her character that the film goes completely off the rails with one embarrassing mental breakdown scene in particular. As for Molly Parker, her shrink character exists solely in the realm of fantasy, at no point do you believe her character comes from any convincing reality whatsoever. Rupert Evans might be even worse in a support role. He’s not convincing for a second here, badly miscast. McGregor himself is strangely bland and miscast in the lead role too, which is another big problem. He’s flat in a crucial role. I will say that there are solid performances by Dakota Fanning, David Strathairn, and Uzo Aduba but they can’t correct course here.

 

Lumpy, totally unconvincing film with eye-rolling clichéd dialogue and wildly uneven performances from a top cast. The plot suggested something of promise, but this treatment is pretty poor. Always nice to see Peter Riegert on screen though, as a family patriarch.

 

Rating: D+

 

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