Serena is a truly awful film made by people of incredible talent. Watching this film, I recalled Roger Ebert's review of the dark comedy Death To Smoochy in which he said that "Only enormously talented people could have made" it. In the long run, Serena almost feels like a purposeful attempt to be terrible. However, it's way too dull and unbearable to truly achieve that goal.
The worst part about the fact that Serena seems to be going for some sort of "so bad it's good" cult classic is that everyone involved in the film has a lot of talent. Stars Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence have made two other terrific films together (ironically, both directed by David O Russell, who Alan Smitheed his film this year as did the director of this film.) They have a very good supporting cast including Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones, David Dencik and Sean Harris.The director, Susanne Bier, has done excellent drams such as Love Is All You Need, Brothers (2004) and In A Better World. The screenwriter, Christopher Kyle (working from a novel by Ron Rash,) penned the criminally overlooked The Weight Of Water (also based on a novel.) A film with this much talent should not end up being so deadly dull. The first hint I got of that they were trying to make a bad film along the lines of something you would see on Mystery Science Theater 3000 is that Lawrence & Cooper, american actors playing american characters who speak English, are delivering their lines like Tommy Wiseau in The Room. The way in which they emphasize every word with a fake foreign accent is painful.
There's a plot in here somewhere. It involves Serena (Lawrence) marrying George (Cooper) only to reveal she is a powerful woman planning to be in charge of his thriving lumber business. There's also a subplot involving a man (Jones) who wants George to sign over his land. Honestly, I forgot just about everything there was to forget the second I walked out of this theater and thank god for that!
The other big problem with this film is the plot (as displayed in the previous paragraph), which goes absolutely nowhere until the bonkers ending that is way too out of place to count for anything. For 100 minutes of its 105 minute run time, the plot never develops into anything more than "Woman is seductive. Man wants to keep land." There's no feeling that anyone on set cared enough to point this out and everyone just listlessly shot each scene.
While there may be worse films this year, there will almost certainly be no bigger waste of talent. Serena is definitive proof that even the best and most talented people can have a terrible day at work. I'm just hoping that Cooper & Lawrence will never make something this awful together again. If a script like this comes their way, I'll be willing to write Silver Linings Playbook 2 for them to star in together.
(1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for some violence and sexuality)
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