FEAST OF LOVE

There are many things on which to feast in this disappointing drama from director Robert Benton (Places in the Heart, Kramer vs. Kramer), but love isn't one of them.

Poor storytelling, unlikable characters, leaden dialogue and more cringe-worthy faux-sentimentality than a Lifetime movie? Dig in!

Set in Portland, OR, the story follows the unfortunate love lives of a number of people, all of whom either work at or frequent a coffee shop owned by Bradley Thomas (Greg Kinnear). Bradley is a relentlessly boring guy whose rather shrewish wife, Kathryn (Selma Blair), up and leaves him in the film’s first 10 minutes after she falls for the most predatory onscreen lesbian since Catherine Tramell. This hot but boorish gal is such a walking stereotype – she’s a softball player! she drives a Jeep and does so with her left leg cocked up on the door, ‘cause she’s bad-ass! – that all she was missing was a Melissa Etheridge T-shirt. Beyond the hotness and overt plot machinations, it’s never clear why Kathryn is smitten with her new flame...though boredom with Bradley had to have been a contributing factor.

Anyway, Bradley is inexplicably devastated and confides in shop regular Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman in his umpteenth Voice of Wisdom role), a professor on leave due to the death of his son. Harry advises Bradley to start small, and find life’s little blessings to be happy about...prompting Bradley to immediately hook up with realtor Diana (Radha Mitchell), a deceptively lovely woman who’s actually worse for him than Kathryn ever was. Meanwhile, Brad’s eager young employee, Oscar (Toby Hemingway), falls head over heels for new-girl-in-town Chloe (Alexa Davalos), who pronounces her name Chlo-AY and, sadly, has virtually no chemistry with her onscreen beau. Their young love is meant to be idealistic but was, like Bradley, dull and uninteresting. Even throwing in a batshit-crazy, knife-wielding father (Fred Ward) – actually named Bat (seriously) – didn’t help.

What unfolds is, I think, meant to be a fable about the occasional pitfalls and overall triumphs of love, but is actually an unconvincing tale that, if anything, denounces love instead of celebrating it. Bradley doesn’t come off as a hopeless romantic so much as an idiot unable to see the blinding flaws in the women he chooses. Oscar and Chloe, though more endearing, aren’t engaging characters and their storyline just kind of limps along towards a predictable conclusion. And poor Harry...he’s left to (literally) wander the streets reflecting on everybody else’s problems. Where’s the love in Feast of Love?

Director Benton makes a number of technical missteps, in my opinion, not the least of which is his cast of meh people. None of the characters stands out and none feel real or true. Benton also enjoys an unrelenting use of fading to black. Over and over again, the scenes fade to black...as though a commercial were about to pop onscreen. Surely, after the second or third one, some kind of more imaginative transition could have been used, no? It was distracting. Speaking of distraction, Benton also opts for lots of nudity...presumably to maintain a sense of realism (i.e., people who just finished having lots of the sex will probably be naked) but, after a while, it felt gratuitous, especially since the women were up there fully frontally naked while the guys always had their bits and pieces covered. At that point, it’s no longer edgy, it’s annoying.

Performance-wise, the only people who affected me in any way were Freeman and Jane Alexander, who plays Harry’s wife, Esther. They didn’t have much to do, but they did manage to choke me up just a little. Kinnear? Mitchell? Blair? Yawn. And Ward’s über-clichéd drunk was just that...über-clichéd and bordering on funny.

The ads for Feast of Love would like you believe it’s akin to Love, Actually or some other kind of multi-character feel-good flick that’ll leave you satisfied. Unfortunately, this feast is one that will leave you with heartburn more than any kind of warm, glowy feeling.