If you want a movie to feel like a legitimate, powerful drama… get Morgan Freeman to act as a heartbroken old man. Or if you want it to resonate even more, get Morgan Freeman to bookend the film with melancholy narration. Better yet, get Morgan Freeman to play God. Any one of those will surely improve your film, if not for just a little bit. Feast of Love does all three, and yet it sucks. It sucks on a level that is downright bewildering.
There are telltale signs that you can pick up on when a movie fails adapting a novel. If the scenes start to feel episodic by constantly fading in and out to black, something is usually wrong. If characters or concepts are introduced and then disappear on a whim, something is usually wrong. If it starts to feel like there are six different movies going on at once, something is usually wrong. Feast of Love strikes three and out. There is no plot to be found. The movie jumps from scene to scene with little progression from one to the other, with even its characters seemingly switching storylines as well. Big developments are not fleshed out, only casually mentioned. It’s hard to attach with the characters because of it. It becomes less of a movie and more a filmed timeline.
Morgan Freeman’s character is not literally God, but he might as well be. As retired professor Harry, he spends a good part of the film simply walking somewhere and finding something worth commenting on, then expounds on his guidance. His wisdom is reserved for two people: his friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear), who’s too easy to fall in love; and young couple Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos), who represent youthful abandon. Possibly the silliest scene in the whole movie (and it’s hard to pick one) is when Harry walks into a football stadium late at night and finds a young couple naked at the 50-yard line, having passionate sex. After quietly watching them for a while with grandfatherly eyes, Harry then comes up with a profound philosophical rumination.
To be fair, it’s not exactly an easy book to adapt. Feast of Love is about an idea. It’s an exploration of how love can take many different shapes and forms; from its purest, most innocent incarnation to the dirty, unpredictable side. It can be cruel, it can be sweet, and it can be misdirected. With an ensemble, it has to go on tangents and cover an enormous patch of land. However, the script by Allison Burnett tries to grasp at this all-encompassing idea in an all-too conventional melodrama. The result is a soap opera typically going all over the place. The beginning of the film is spent exploring Selma Blair’s character discovering that she is a lesbian, only for her to disappear from the film completely shortly afterwards. Sub-characters like Oscar’s drunken, stab-happy father are introduced, hilariously interrupting an otherwise pleasant film with completely out-of-place tension (is there a rule somewhere that every romantic drama has to have one asshole with a knife?). Plot developments like Oscar and Chloe making a porno is picked up and quickly discarded without consequence. There\'s even some mystic and supernatural forces at work too. Honestly, it\'s just too much. Not even the charm peppered here and there can save it from its sugary sweet cliches.
For a film preaching about the different facets of love, it doesn’t seem to have any interest in depicting anything but the basest of romance. Love at first sight, puppy love, discovering homosexuality… all one-note emotions that are not at all challenged nor interesting. The message is sweet, the conclusion is something that the world needs, and some of the characters have big hearts that, though naïve, can be commendable. Okay—but if there\'s no real story to string them together, those ideas should stay on Hallmark cards. The actors perform sufficiently; particularly Greg Kinnear, who plays the only truly likable fellow. Although disassociated from the movie’s tone, the many nudity and sex scenes in the movie are gracefully done under Robert Benton’s direction. It’s a crying shame that they are so passionate within a film that is duller than dishwater.
"Feast of Love" opens September 27, 2007 and is rated PG. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Robert Benton. Written by Allison Burnett, Charles Baxter. Starring Greg Kinnear, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair, Toby Hemingway.
