My DIY film/writing school

Monster-in-Law

I wanted to like this one. Good trailer, but unfortunately that was the entire sum total of funny bits in the movie.

Damn.

I like Jane Fonda. I like J-Lo. Kinda. Michael Vartan is great in Alias, and is quite funny in the behind the scenes bits for this movie.

But it's the script that lets this one down. It felt like a first draft - needs way, way more work.

What can I learn from this?

1. Don't spend too long on a set up - it was 15 minutes before there was any meaningful conflict. Way, way too long.
2. Follow a three-act structure. Don't just have an episodic series of painful encounters between your protagonist and antagonist. This was painful to watch.

There was a good moment - this is a bit of a spoiler I guess so don't read on if you don't want to know that J-Lo's character Charlie decides to call off the wedding, which makes Fonda's Viola character have a change of heart. That was a nice moment, but that was all it was. And it wasn't a movie moment, it was a sitcom moment.

Ah well. Got to be some bad movies, I suppose...

posted by Simon @ 8:08 am