Movie Review: Friends & Lovers

Friends & Lovers: Torgo disapproves

This is a movie of a play based on a book by Eric Jerome Dickey, one of my wife's favorite authors. It's not so much a movie based on a play as a recording of a performance of a play.

That shouldn't count against it. One of my favorites is "Vanya on 42nd Street," which is the same thing, only, as my wife put it, "less ghetto."

I don't call things ghetto, and neither does she. But if we did, "Friends & Lovers" would be ghetto.

There are two main problems worth noting:

1) It's a play that turns into a musical halfway through. The first hour, no songs. Straight up romantic comedy. Then, an hour in, a character bursts into song. Ok, random song in a movie. Happens in "Toy Story 2" and that's still an awesome movie. But then they keep coming. It becomes a full-fledged (ok, half-fledged) musical, and that's just not right.

2) It's a badly directed play. Several actors race through their lines so quickly they can't be understood. The blocking is all off. It's randomly preachy. It's just all around a rough production.