After seeing a rather endearing trailer, my wife and I went to the Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany to see the movie Janet Planet on a Tuesday evening.
It’s weird. After we shared our impressions afterward, we pointed out some interesting things about what the movie set out to do in depicting a single mom (the title character played by Juliana Nicholson) and her tween daughter Lacy (Zoey Ziegler) in 1991.
Yet, seeing the film in real-time, the revelations unfolded too slowly and possibly obliquely for our taste.
Early during the movie, an older gentleman in the audience pulled out his phone. I thought it strange until I realized that he was turning up his hearing aid. The first section, the one featuring Janet’s brusque boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), was almost all long shots and difficult to hear.
The next section involved the troupe of performers, which was interesting enough, as Janet reconnects with old friend Regina (Sophie Okonedo). This section is at least slightly more interesting. The third act involves that group – is it a cult? – Guru, Avi (Elias Koteas).
Lacy, meanwhile, is largely observing her mother’s life, making sometimes pointed comments. But mostly, she is alone in her thoughts except for her increasingly interesting doll house characters. She has no friends except, briefly, one. Her piano lessons seem a chore for both the student and her instructor.
Reviews
The Rotten Tomatoes critics’ reviews were 84% positive. One compared it favorably with the mother/daughter piece Lady Bird. I LIKED Lady Bird.
One negative review by Rich Cline reflected our thoughts: “The mannered approach means that story only comes to life in brief spurts of insight, especially as the excellent cast adds details to characters who are somewhat undefined. But much of the film involves watching nothing happen at all.”
I generally agreed with the audience reviews, which were only 40% positive. While I don’t think it was “pointless” or “the worst film in decades,” which I read more than once, “this is a very, very slow film in which little happens. If the characters were the least bit engaging, this might have worked.”
I was bored and impatient, and my wife wished she had not gone.
It does have some nice western Massachusetts scenery, which we were familiar with. The story is by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker. It supposedly “captures a child’s experience of time passing, and the ineffability of a daughter falling out of love with her mother, in this singularly sublime film debut.”
It just didn’t work for us.
Also, the title kept reminding me of Van Morrison’s first wife.