Directed By Keith Gerchak and Marisa Guterman

Starring – Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, Martin Sheen

The Plot – A new American fable about the post-Industrial American Dream in the Industrial Midwest. A slice-of-life depiction over a 24-hour period that follows the personal odysseys of five very different people, whose lives intertwine when America’s favorite televised antiques appraisal show comes to their city.

Rated PG-13 for brief strong adult language/sexual material.

Lost & Found in Cleveland: Trailer

POSITIVES

If history has taught Clevelanders anything about detail to depiction, it’s that most productions choose outsider locations to unnaturally emulate their impression of the rust belt city, a tradition broken faithfully here, with filming locations persisting entirely by the so-called “Mistake by the lake”. This is a film that is so unflinchingly Cleveland that its imagery feels like a bingo board of familiar locations and businesses that Gerchak and Guterman work into the air of their flourishing transitions, made all the more impressive by the way the dynamic duo cleverly work them into the daily routines of its characters, in order to justify their inclusions as anything other than memory berries that will only pay-off to a minimalized percentage of the audience who have either lived here, or are quite familiar with the area. In that aspect, Gerchak and Guterman also effectively muster not only the psychology of those persisting within a battle-tested place, whose resiliency is maintained in the motivation of talking of better days gone by, but also the atmospheric monotony that responsibly breeds an essence of redundancy to those involved, all without bitterly lashing out at the city with the kind of cynicism that could condemn the appeal of investing two hours to such a place of such colorful characters. On top of this, the film is obviously produced with the limitations of a cheap budget, but that doesn’t stop cinematographer Davon Slininger from immersing us in the ambition of his creative choices with the shot compositions, particularly the metaphorical meanings in some distinct framing choices that conjure some artistic merit to an engagement that I definitely wasn’t expecting any from. Between subtly unraveling transitions in the war-torn memories of one character drifting back to the heaviness of their traumatic memories, and stunningly sleek motions of the lens conveying insight in the ulterior motives of morally questionable characters, the imagery effectively tells a story twice as cohesively as its narrative, serving as the primary reason why I remained as faithfully invested for as long as I did, and in turn inscribing legitimacy to a presentation that was given very little promise to immerse audiences into the element of it feeling like a big screen presentation, instead of a Hallmark movie of the week. Lastly, while this is an ensemble film that lives and dies by the impact of performances from the extent of its cast, there are a couple of familiar faces who stand out among the crowd, particularly Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, and Stacy Keach, who each bring so much ample heart to the design of their individualized characters. This is especially the case for Haysbert, whose arc pertaining to the cold chill of loss around the holidays summons what should’ve been the intended tonal capacity for the engagement, with sincerity and tenderness to delivery that the time spent with him so charming, and though the wonderful coupling of Squibb and Keach are condemned to an arc that essentially goes nowhere, they enrich interactions with a lived-in brand of chemistry that reminds me a lot of the elderly couples who have spent a long time with one another, featuring witty banter and endearing charisma that makes the most of the minimalization of material that they’re each given.

NEGATIVES

Even despite the movie’s authentic charms, it pains me to assess that “The Holdovers” is still the last great Christmas movie, as a result of so many unremarkable decisions that burden this film to the kind of bore that it had no right to be, especially with so many credible actors in front of the camera attached. For starters, the script is a total mess, both in the unnecessity and unrealizing of this being a Christmas movie, with only background decorations indicating us towards the holiday, and a barrage of arcs from a multitude of characters, which continuously exhausts the consistency of the storytelling to keep up with them. While the individualized threads do eventually converge towards this game show, the editing is relaxed to the point that it feels like it falls asleep, every time it deviates between them, with far too much time spent on conversations and comedic punchlines that land with an echoing thud, crafting a lack of progressing momentum that makes this film feel every inch of its overstuffed two hour runtime, and then some. While the comedy occasionally lands on a refreshingly naturalistic response, the material itself is the most tone-deaf kind of sitcom consistency that telegraphed punchlines from miles away, requiring the gifted ensemble to work overtime towards making chicken salad out of chicken shit, and the dialogue, while hitting every obvious possibility on the expositional notebook of implanted backstory to the audience, crafts these individualized arcs whose intended landing feels glaringly predictable as quickly as the film’s initial moments, leaving it a tedious chore for the movie to catch-up, as it deviates between a majority of characters who are either morally reprehensible or annoying, to say the least. The sluggish pacing makes this movie feel like nothing was left on the cutting room floor of its finished edit to fill the deleted scenes section on a home release, and considering the third act puts us to sleep in the clutches of this antique roadshow framing device, with these long-winded explanations on origins and metaphorical meaning paralleling the characters, it’s easy to see what could’ve been cut or hemmed from a finished product that should’ve never passed the 100 minute mark. On top of this, the production outside of the cinematography is plagued by some distracting details that unintentionally take away from the depths of the storytelling, with imagery that still leaves me with more questions than answers, with regards to the artistic intention of this production. Among them, some of the worst artificial snowfall that I’ve ever seen in a movie, with a complete lack of tangibility and influence to deviate away from the notion that this was shot during any of the other three seasons that aren’t Winter, as well as unsubtle product placement perhaps paying back local businesses who might have been responsible for inflating the movie’s budget as far as they possibly could. Easily the worst among them is Discount Drug Mart, a Midwest chain of convenience stores that attains some semblance of visual notoriety each time a character brings something home, with a centering in frame to its depiction that makes the commercializing intent all the more inescapably evident in the interpretation of the audience, without anything in the direction that makes it feel like an obvious intention to cater to the comedic tone. Likewise, the sets and overall production designs still leave me confused just what era that this film is taking place in, with an argument to be made for the 70’s or even contemporary times, on account of the inconsistencies that left ample room for both. While there are plenty of cell phone conversations or stadium names shown in the imagery to convey that this story is taking place in current day, there’s also grainy sports footage and outdated Ohio license plates that debate this notion, perhaps as a means of truly crafting a timeless story that either transcends distinguished dates or speaks volumes to the notion that Cleveland is an outdated frame of mind. Perhaps we will never know. Finally, it gives me no pleasure to single out a member of the assembled production, however Sven Faulconer’s complete compositions inside of the movie’s score lacks any kind of energy or dimensionality to play anything but deliberately into the direction of each scene they accompany, feeling like spoon-fed sentiments from a composer who has little faith in his audience to properly gauge the emotional impulses that each scene candidly calls for. The worst among them is easily this awkwardly heavy-handed instrumental wallowed during a character’s bout with inherited racism, which is ridiculously played for comedy in the script, then helmed overly dramatically for Faulconer’s underlining, and it’s one of the many examples of the music and direction not always being on the same page with one another, producing these jarring tonal clashes that make an already difficultly investing movie all the more frenetic with the air of its intent.

OVERALL
“Lost & Found in Cleveland” is a lump of coal to Christmas cinema that isn’t funny or sweet enough to capitalize on the interests of geographic outsiders to Northeast Ohio, who aren’t enamored by the imagery porn persistently adorned in its on-site authentic production. While some of the performances from this stacked ensemble of familiar faces do muster some charming cadence to the lack of subtlety or speculation attained to their characters, the overstuffed two hour runtime of overlong interactions and overwhelming structure make this another mistake by the lake that traumatically can be measured at shoulder length with ‘The Drive’ or ‘The Fumble’.

My Grade: 4.1 or D-