The Glass Castle ** (2017, Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Naomi Watts) – Movie Review

Co-writer/ director Destin Daniel Cretton’s serious-minded 2017 film is an interesting and conscientious but unconvincingly staged coming-of-age true-life memoir, with neither Brie Larson nor Naomi Watts seen at their best.

Woody Harrelson (wearing a dodgy-looking wig) is better in a rare serious piece of work as their girl’s troubled and alcoholic father, taking out his childhood abuse at the hands of his mother on everyone. Harrelson is the best thing in the film, giving a very powerful, sometimes scary performance.

Ella Anderson plays the younger Jeannette and Larson plays the older Jeannette, trying to survive her dysfunctional family of nonconformist nomads. Watts plays her eccentric artist mother.

Running a long- seeming 127 minutes, the film moves with difficulty over two periods, with the makeup on Harrelson and Watts not succeeding in ageing them credibly.

It is an uncomfortable, off-putting experience, in the company of three characters the film makes you feel sorry for but not empathise with, as it should. The main character needs to be portrayed as more likeable and sympathetic for the film to succeed. Yes, she is going through a bad time, but we need more than this to go on for 127 minutes. It is a very particular story, but somehow it comes over as generic, with characters who don’t emerge here as especially unique or fascinating.

The screenplay by Cretton and Andrew Lanham is based on the autobiography book by the real Jeannette Walls.

Cretton’s last film was the excellent 2013 Short Term 12, also with Larson.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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