AIIW: That's Not Us

Movie Stats:
Released 2015 (USA)
American, in English
Director - William Sullivan
Stars - Mark Berger, Elizabeth Gray, Tommy Nelms, Nicole Pursell, David Rysdahl, Sarah Wharton

Plot Summary:
When three couples - lesbians Jackie (Pursell) and Alex (Wharton); gays James (Berger) and Spencer (Rysdahl); and straights Liz (Gray) and Dougie (Nelms) - spend a weekend together at a beach house, all of their problems are magnified.

Warnings:
Lots and lots of blue language; lots and lots of sexy times; female nudity (breasts and butt) and brief male nudity (butt only); a drug reference.

Bad Stuff:
BORING.

I’m admittedly high on the prude scale when it comes to the sex lives of people I know. That is to say, I don’t want to know anything about what my friends do in the bedroom. I certainly don’t want to see it or hear it. So I was completely turned off by these people doing it like bunnies, in common areas and in rooms where their friends could hear, and talking about it openly. It took me out of the movie as I kept wondering, “Do people really do it this much on vacation? With their friends in the next room? Aren’t their parts starting to hurt?”

I saw the plot twist (it was a small, inconsequential one) coming a mile away. It was so obvious that I kept wondering if the characters were really stupid, since they couldn’t figure it out.

It feels a bit like a student film.

Good Stuff:
I liked the central message about communication. All of these people had problems in their relationships, and all of them had a difficult time expressing that to their respective partners. I thought it was interesting that most of them could easily articulate to their friends, but not their partners, what was wrong. It was insightful and it resonated with me.

The arguments felt realistic - difficult and full of frustration, but not crazed screaming matches, like you see in a lot of films.

The Verdict:
I must have started and stopped at least three films before landing on this one. It wasn’t that any of those films seemed bad from the five minutes I watched of each of them. It was more that I wasn’t in the mood for that type of film at that time. “British heist movie a la Lock Stock? Nah. Intellectual indie sci fi? Definitely not right now.” I’m not sure why “talkie relationship drama” felt like it fit the bill, but at least I learned something about myself. I don’t like talkie relationship dramas. Apart from the central message, there wasn’t much that was good about this film. For the most part, it was slow and utterly, painfully boring. All the sex scenes in the world couldn’t jazz it up.

I give it 2 stars.