5/10

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence co-star on the big screen for a 3rd time in this American Dream romance film set in 1929 North Carolina. “Serena” is a story adapted from the novel of the same name by Ron Rash. The film by director Susanne Bier tells the story of the deteriorating relationship between North Carolina timber George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) and his fiercely independent, entrepreneurial-minded wife Serena (Jennifer Lawrence) following a devastating tragedy. A woman who isn’t afraid to speak her mind and relishes the opportunity for manual labor in the forest, the enigmatic Serena subsequently grows intensely jealous of the woman who previously bore her husband a son, and quickly begins to unravel over suspicions that Pemberton is sheltering his illegitimate family. What starts off as a romantic melodrama, quickly fades out to a terribly edited and flat film that is every bit as dull as the timber they are cutting. What ruined “Serena” for me mostly fell at the feet of a relationship between the film’s main stars that isn’t believable or heart felt to me. The marriage is rushed by in the opening ten minutes without even so much as a flashback of how they came to be known as married to begin with. One second Cooper hunts Lawrence for her heart, and the next second they are arriving in North Carolina, married, and controlling a business together. How do you take arguably the two hottest stars currently in the world and make their chemistry feel as artificial as a cardboard stand up? You would never guess that this is the same two actors whose union easily carried my #2 film of 2012, “Silver Linings Playbook”. For starters, they are both so unlikable as two self centered millionaires whose only interest is advancing in life no matter who it hurts. They are both terribly constructed, and are easily forgettable in the extensive careers of both actors. The supporting cast is wasted with veterans like Rhys Ifans and David Dencik not given enough back story for us to care during the limited time they are on screen. Toby Jones is the only performance that i got any enjoyment out of. He plays a police detective who is hot on the heels of our two protagonists. Jones has always been one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets to me, and i’m glad that he makes the most out of his scenes in this opportunity. I only wish Jones could’ve been given a better script to possibly push his performance into a possible Supporting Actor nominee at the Oscars. Behind the scenes stories have said that this film has been on the shelves since early 2013, and suffered three different versions of the film with each being edited their own way. The sloppiness of this third draft is certainly present as many plot points pop up without ever being introduced prior in the film. For instance, Lawrence has some burn scars on her back to which she asks Cooper “Do my scars bother you”. As the viewer, we know Lawrence lost her family in a fire because of a brief explanation in the opening minutes of the film, but we never find out anything about damage done in the fire, so when it pops up out of nowhere it feels like we maybe missed a scene along the way. Two things that did drive the score up for me were the wardrobe and the amazing set pieces. The nostalgic feel of 1929 really does feel evident in a country that is going through it’s worst of times with men accepting jobs beneath the wealth they would like. The forrest scenes are done wonderfully with a time machine feel before these trees were ever knocked down in favor of housing or condos. The community among these wood workers is very well constructed. The wardrobe couldn’t be better, as it was the only thing that made me get lost in the actors portraying real people of this era. The ending was terribly anti climatic, and had me wondering if Bier was aiming for a Bonnie and Clyde feel between the movie’s main stars. The problem is that with no chemistry built on screen, we don’t care about the consequences that await either of these two characters. This film isn’t coming out in theaters until March of 2015, which at that point will be two and a half years after production wrapped up, and it’s easy to see why this one was left on the shelf for so long. “Serena” is too boring for any theater experience, and even fans of Cooper and Lawrence will find very little to enjoy about a film that failed to bring out the charisma from two of Hollywood’s finest.