Lisa Cleff

The “gentile washing”, the lack of female representation, immigrant rep, Gay rep is just scratching the surface of the many and varied issues I have with this film. The sound was muddy and garbled, the actors forgot the main tenants of their craft in that...I had trouble deciphering whatever intonation, or decibel they felt comfortable emitting, the story was basically impossible to follow unless one is an insider/film fanatic/history buff, as I am...and I still found myself looking for excuses to get up and forage for something more compelling to do, and Gary Oldman’s performance was UNcharmingly stylized to a point of surrealism, and not in a good way. Like...what was that accent? The guy spoke like he was an escaped Jabberwalkie let loose in a Marx Brothers’ world that makes The Tin Man seem naturalistic. I kept wishing the whole thing had been directed by Amy Sherman Palladino...at least that way it would have a consistent tone, some authenticity and have been audible. I had so much to dislike at the outset that I did not even get to the other four courses of the crime...it’s veritable feast of erasure. That’s where my having had high expectations, and they only having white straight gentile men in the writers room gets you. Ugh.