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Aug 29, 2014 By Kyle Turner Web Exclusive

The world needs more Jayma Mays. Though her work as an actress maybe isn’t as defining as some other character actresses, she has thus far demonstrated a fair about a versatility. She’s done Glee and small roles in Epic Movie and Red Eye and a romantic lead in The Smurfs. But, alas, she is always underused. There’s a beguiling charm to Ms. Mays, from her warm smile to her charmingly chipper voice. It’s no different here in Last Weekend, written and directed by Tom Dolby (and co-directed by Tom Williams), where she is one in an ensemble of underwritten and overwrought characters brought together at a lake house for Labor Day Weekend where drama ensues.

For, as much exposition as there is to describe each character, very little of it is ever actually exhibited in any discernible sense. There’s a supposed sensitivity to each person, there’s the implication of nuance beneath the neuroses, but there is nothing concrete.

Last Weekend follows very closely in the footsteps of other family dramedies, in which various family members who are not compatible with one another are squeezed together in literal and metaphorical claustrophobia. But perhaps Dolby’s biggest weakness is that, though the specific situations are different, there’s very little differentiating between this and other family dramas of the same ilk. Dolby never strays far from the formula, and its queer content does nothing to make the film distinctive. While saying that these characters are “unlikable” would undoubtedly prompt someone to throw Rebecca Mead’s essential New Yorker piece on “The Scourge of Reliability” in my direction, the problem with these characters, and moreover Dolby’s script, is that the inner lives of the characters are explored on only a tangential level.

Only Patricia Clarkson shines in the film, who, though mired in the kind of problems that made some critics scoff at Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, almost transcends her material to epitomize the sensitivity that Dolby seeks from his entire ensemble. Clarkson’s voice is able to oscillate between the fidgety, arguably Type A mother and someone wounded and implicitly having an existential crisis with regard to her role in a family whose members continue to go on their own paths. To put it simply, there is both strength and weakness in her line delivery, self-assuredness and a wavering quality.

Last Weekend only ever wavers, never strong enough to be unique, never sensitive enough to be insightful.

lastweekendfilm.com

Author rating: 5.5/10