Review: August: Osage County
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: C] The cast is packed with A-listers, but they're engaged in a virtual tournament of acting at one another.
City Paper grade: C
The first two films adapted from the work of playwright Tracy Letts, Bug and Killer Joe, were both nastily barbed plunges into contagious amorality, tautly directed by William Friedkin. As with those earlier films, Letts penned the screenplay for August: Osage County, but whether the blame falls on his adaptation, the original Pulitzer-winning play or John Wells’ slack direction, the third time loses the charm. The cast is packed with A-listers, but they’re engaged in a virtual tournament of acting at one another. For sheer ferocity, Meryl Streep walks away with the trophy. She’s let off the leash as the pill-popping matriarch whose husband drowns himself at the outset, stitching together a Southern Gothic grotesque out of wild gesticulations and claws-bared put-downs. Julia Roberts fares better, at least when she’s not being drawn into shout-offs with Streep, while Chris Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch add heft to this emoting tug-of-war. But most of the performances become as stifling as the un-air-conditioned Oklahoma setting, and Letts scripts the recriminations and confessions as a relentless succession of explosions — as monotonous as a two-hour fireworks display.
