It's not about a poignant overly dramatic epic, its about real people and their real problems.
10/10
Author: mcbrideanjilyn from Milpitas, CA
30 January 2013
*** This review contain spoilers ***
OK clearly nobody got this movie but me. And part of the reason for that is you got millions of people out there who can't appreciate a movie unless it's full of catch phrases and one liners and dramatic emphasis and cornball speeches and overly dramatic acting, what this movie has is sooo much better. It has reality. Beth (Rebecca Hall)is a stripper from Tallahassee who wants to get out of her shitty life and find something bigger, something better.
And well of course when your a stripper what isn't a better job right? So her big dream is to be a cocktail waitress in Vegas. And that is where it all starts. You see in this movie you won't find any phrases that will linger in movie history, or incredibly enigmatic characters that will be imprinted on our memory forever, what you will have is something much better, you will walk away from this movie with your belief, that if you want something bad enough you can make it happen, renewed and strengthened again.
It makes you feel like if Beth a slightly ditsy but secretly smart stripper from Florida can make something from nothing, surely there's still hope for you. Beth encounters a myriad of people who all teach her something about surviving. One of the other critics of this show said "all she does is follow the money" well in reality, most of us don't have money growing from a tree in the back yard, we have to follow the money, that's how we eat!
As Beth points out at one point in the movie to another person when he says money isn't everything, "that's always what people with money say." This movie is a slice of a small persons life. That's all, just a slice, a small slice of a small person, but that's why it's relate-able. These people are real, these events happen to people, that's why you can relate to Beth and why you root for her all through the movie even when you want to bonk her on the head. And at one point in the movie when one of the characters, Holly, refers to herself and others as "one of them" or when she refers to herself as "one of us" what she's talking about are "street people."
It may be hard to understand but there are the normal people who go around doing everything that makes sense, and they generally do pretty well. They have jobs and cars and spouses. They are always on time for work, they work hard, they take pride in their work, they are honest, they don't lie and they don't steal. Then there are street people. Street people will tell you that they are loyal, and honest, and true and that they will always be there for you, but in reality, they lie to your face all the time, they rob you blind, while stabbing you in the back and sometimes in the face (sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally) and yet while they do these things to each other, they repeatedly deal with each other anyway.
They work with and hire the same thieves, addicts, liars and back-stabbers repeatedly and don't understand why they wouldn't. These are the street people, the "them" and the "us" that is referred to now and then. Beth came from the street and wants to become a normal person, and she learns how to survive from the other street people whilst learning who she doesn't want to be. She meets 1 street person Dink who ends up becoming semi normal and a better person at the end, and she meets Jeremy, who is cute and incredibly normal and loyal to Beth to the end, and she wants to become normal like him and be with him and this movie is how she gets there.
"Another critic of this movie said "your not sure if your supposed to be moved or disgusted or if it's supposed to be humorous or sad" realize that if you have to have someone tell you what your supposed to feel that that is very sad. You should know your own mind well enough to know if something strikes you as funny or moving or not without needing someone to tell you if your "supposed" to be or not. This movie is not going to hand you a moral on a silver plate, nor does life, you have to look for the lessons. This movie is based in reality, the other critics said that the performances were Luke-warm, but that's because they didn't get what the actors were doing.
They were playing real people, not scripted characters. Real people aren't larger than life.(on peut le dire!) They're just trying to live like everyone else. On the contrary these actors turned in phenomenal performances as characters they have never had to play before. Normal people. And they did it excellently. Would you ever say you would ever see Bruce Willis playing a weak ass-hole? No! But he does it so well and so convincingly that it's fantastic to watch.
