|
Baggage Claim
| Released |
11 October 2013 |
| Director |
David E. Talbert |
Starring
|
Paula Patton, Derek Luke, Taye Diggs, Jill Scott, Boris Kodjoe, Adam Brody, Djimon Hounsou |
| Writer(s) |
David E. Talbert |
Producer(s)
|
David E. Talbert, Steven J. Wolfe |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
97 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
Crash landing.
Baggage Claim is aggressively terrible. Not content with just its numbskull script and questionable sexual politics, it wears its stupidity on its artistic sleeve. From the cheap back projection to the most cringe-inducing slow motion sex scene in recent memory, it’s a film that screams incompetence. The man responsible is David E. Talbert. Talbert, in a literal interpretation of the phrase “triple-threat”, wrote the novel (the fact that this threadbare story started life as a novel boggles the mind), adapted it for the screen and then took on the role of director.
The film stars Paula Patton as an air hostess called Montana who is about to hit thirty. When her much younger sister announces her engagement, Montana beings to panic at the prospect of attending the wedding as a single woman. Backed by her workmates Gail (Jill Scott) and Sam (Adam Brody) she decides to give some of her exes a second shot, researching their travel plans and deliberately bumping into them on flights.
It’s a silly concept which produces silly results but worse, it’s a film that at once tries to nail the absurdities of modern dating while at the same time offering up a central character who believes that being unmarried at thirty not only makes her over the hill but also not “a lady”. The sexual politics here are emphatically stuck in the past as Montana grins inanely at a succession of prospective husbands.
It doesn’t help matters that Patton’s performance is so shoddy. Though her career so far hasn’t been littered with stand-out performances, she has generally been a solid presence...until now. Here, she gives her character an unappealing air of simpering desperation, while throughout, the strain of being enthusiastic about the material manifests itself in a rictus grin that rarely leaves her face. But then the material she and all the other cast members have to deal with is so staggeringly poor it would fell the best of actors.
Baggage Claim is definitely one of the worst films I’ve seen this year, the kind of viewing experience that makes you want to crawl under your seat in sheer embarrassment for all involved.
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Linda O’Brien |
