Main Street

source: Main Street

I watched to the end, so it wasn't "that bad", as I saw the movie on a DVD at home and could have turned it off at any time. But that much said, it barely crossed my personal limit for "tolerable". The storyline is pretty dull and nothing can "fix" this. When you start with an uninteresting story, you get an uninteresting movie. I have no idea what Colin Firth was thinking to accept this part. I chose the movie because I figured he was a star and would surely only appear in a solidly good movie. I was wrong! Perhaps he thought it would be a challenge for him to play a character who is a Texan and felt this would give him a chance to break into being offered also roles for characters who are supposed to speak with American accents. He did quite well in terms of portraying a Texan, but that hardly compensated for a lack of an interesting plot.

Review: Personally, I couldn't see the point of this movie. All the way through the film I thought that there was going to be a major twist, especially with Firth's character, but nothing really happens. Its about a small community which used to be the main producers for cigarettes and Firth company decides to rent some space in the town to store hazardous waste. The lady that he is renting the space from, has severe money problems and she is scared about losing her house so she is relying on the rental money to keep her house. Once her niece realises that the company is storing waste, she decides to take action but after a bad accident with one of the trucks that was transporting the waste, Firth decides to leave the business. I honestly found the movie cheap and really boring. The cast sounded promising, with Colin Firth and Orlando Bloom taking the lead, but the movie was a waste of time and money. The acting isn't that bad from the cast but I didn't like Bloom and Firth's terrible deep South accents and I didn't find any of the characters that interesting. I'm glad that the director didn't make it into a 2 hour epic movie because the storyline really does dry up after a while, which is a shame because it would have been half decent if there was actually a point to the characters individual stories. Disappointing! Round-Up: After the successful Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, I thought that Orlando Bloom was going to be a major star but I haven't really seen him shine in any other movies. At the age of 38 he still has a chance to prove that he can really act, away from the big budget movies, but I'm yet to see him do anything that great. As for the award winning Colin Firth, this just has to go down as another bad day at the office but he really does need to make some better choices in the movies that he takes on. In this film, Bloom and Firth only really cross paths once so the director really didn't take advantage of the cast. He also could have made some use of Andrew McCarthy, who has been missing from the big screen for ages but he only had a little part which wasn't that memorable. At the end of the day, I really didn't enjoy this film but I will give it a couple of stars, just for Ellen Burstyn's performance. Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: $2,560 (Really Terrible!) I recommend this movie to people who are into their dramas about a small town which is promised a prosperous future after a company rents an available warehouse to store hazardous chemicals. 2/10

At first glance, MAIN ST. would seem to have all the ingredients for an absorbing piece - a top-notch cast (with two Brits doing very creditable Southern accents), a strong sense of place (Raleigh, North Carolina), and a taut, spare script by veteran Horton Foote. Then why is the movie such a disappointment? Its subject-matter is a pertinent one: the decline of American urban life and the schemes hatched by entrepreneurs to regenerate it, which might not necessarily please the existing residents. However the production is particularly slow-moving: the camera spends a long time focusing on tight close-ups of the protagonists, especially Ellen Burstyn as Georgiana Carr. This would be a perfectly acceptable strategy, were it not for the consciously showy nature of the performances: the actors are allowed to get away with the kind of theatrical gestures and facial movements that would not seem out of place in Victorian melodrama. As a result, we end up not really caring about the characters at all. Matters are not helped by the treacly soundtrack (from the normally reliable Patrick Doyle) that obtrudes itself on several occasions. Perhaps the material might have been better if another director had handled it.

I expected so much from this talented group of people. This movie blew up in my face like hazardous waste. Pun intended. Honestly, I couldn't find the strength within me to suffer this horrible film. I skipped a couple parts and didn't miss anything. One: Orlando Bloom attempted a southern accent. Please. Two: This old lady creeped me out. Three: This hazardous waste guy and a different older lady fell in love. Ew. Four: They all had southern accents. Which was sorta annoying. I watched most of this movie and can't even tell you what the plot is. The production was average at best, the plot was... (Wait... There was a plot?), and it sorta jumped all over the place with no clear purpose. This movie was a waste of time on all counts.

A very underrated and overlooked film. Since it is written by a playwright it has that pacing. There's nothing overly unique about its plot, but slice-of-life dramas don't always need to be. Its characters bring the setting and story line to life. The cast is loaded with named talent and all perform up to expectations. It's one of those films where you definitely forget the names of the actors and totally see them as their characters.Colin Firth's accent is off a bit, but he's always good. I watched the movie because I'm a Firth fan, but Orlando Bloom's performance is what earned it my 10 rating. The cinematography is excellent and fits the feel of the film. Main Street's score score is elegant. The make-up or lack of it and wardrobe are, in a word, perfect.

This could remind one of a Steven Soderbergh snore fest. It is a lingering, slow moving, vaguely interesting story of the modern American condition that promises much but delivers almost nothing. It is a character study of realistic people in a realistic situation forced to make difficult choices that come from a changing society. But it is all very vapid and the plot points are as unresolved and unanswered as is the finality of it all. The ending is so anti-climactic and the "change of mind and heart" from the "villain" of the piece is just abrupt and embarrassing, as is the final narration that is nothing but consummate corn-pone. The storage of hazardous waste in a formerly hazardous to your health tobacco facility is the one and only irony and the film is just uninspired.

Horton Foote (1916 - 2009) ) was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta. His last original screenplay as MAIN STREET: it is fortunate that he didn't live to see it produced. MAIN STREET seems to have something to say - that the economic crisis has devastated small towns to the point of making questionable decisions out of desperation about improving their near ghost town status; that lessons from around the world (Chernobyl and Fukushima, etc) about toxic waste too often go unheeded; that flight of youth from small towns merely to seek change is not always emotionally convincing a decision: that family history and the accoutrements of same don't necessarily guarantee survival for descendants. And out of these plausible concerns could come a decent story, but here the result is flatline. In his film debut as a director John Doyle (known for fine productions of the operas Peter Grimes, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and the musical comedy Company) he fails to show a grasp of the use of film to tell a story and we are left with a stew of separate ingredients that seem almost immiscible. Durham, North Carolina is the setting - a town shrinking by the year because of lack of jobs and crumbling businesses - and the major (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) is desperate, deciding whether to schedule or move or cancel the annual parade from Thanksgiving to Christmas due to the town's lack of interest and depression. Enter Gus Leroy (Colin Firth) who has rented a defunct tobacco warehouse from a town widow Georgiana Carr (Ellen Burstyn) to store canisters of Hazardous Waste awaiting transport to Vernon, Texas for burying: Leroy's apparent Ecology informed company offers the Durham city council the opportunity for economic resurrection. Georgiana has misgivings about the rental and is faced with the fact that her trust fund form her wealthy father is depleted and she must consider selling the mansion in which she has lived since her birth. She seeks advice form her niece Willa (Patricia Clarkson) who at first objects but on meeting Leroy falls for the man and the project. As a sidebar another family faces changes: young Mary Saunders (Amber Tamblyn) is under the spell of her boss (Andrew McCarthy) but still loves her high school sweetheart Harris (Orlando Bloom), a young cop who is studying law at night and living with his depressed mother (Margo Martindale), urging Harris to 'go steady' with Mary and forget law school to stay in Durham. The human factor enters: there is an accident of one truck hauling canisters (and event that changes the outlook of the wannabe entrepreneur Leroy), Mary's boss is married, and the concept of 'progress' in the decaying town of Durham changes along with the changes in the folk involved in the story. Aside from failing to involve the audience in the story or the characters, the conundrum is why would such a stellar cast of brilliant actors (Colin Firth, Patricia Clarkson, Ellen Burstyn, Orlando Bloom) sign on for such an obvious box office disaster (it is yet to be released)? One can only assume that it was an homage to the memory of the brilliant writer Horton Foote. It is a shame this screenplay is the last note of the legacy he left us. Grady Harp

Watched this by pure coincidence on telly and got hooked by the awesome performance of everyone involved in this film. Story is about a decaying and nearly dead city which is suffocating its citizens. Younger people see their dreams and ambitions smashed by the lack of opportunities, middle aged people are stuck with their problems and older people long for the prosperous days when they were proud and purposeful and could live a decent life. A charismatic but very controversial businessman suddenly arrives. He carries a hazardous load. People find themselves in a painful dilemma. Should they take their risks and embrace change, or should they keep repeating their old routines that are so familiar but also hopeless and frustrating. I really cannot understand how people are not able to relate to this story, I a mean this is probably a situation every single person who has lived on earth has come across once in their lifetime. Acting is solid and captivating. I don't get you people who voted 4.7 out of 10. What is wrong with you??

This was a beautiful film, written by Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay of To Kill a Mockingbird. It has the same classic feel, with an updated story to fit modern times and conflicts. Top-notch actors make it even better. No, this is not a slam-bam action flick. If you want something like that, watch Transformers. There is a plot, and it's pretty straightforward -- a hazardous waste company sends a rep to a dying town to try to convince them to let them build a plant. The film covers not only what happens in this layer, but how the residents come to appreciate and love their town. The people have heart. There is no "bad guy" here, just people trying to live. Not many films these days give me a warm, cozy feeling by the time they're through. This one did. I'm satisfied it was worth the money to watch it.