St. Vincent (Cinema Screening)

(Spoiler free)

St. Vincent trailers have been littering the cinemas for months now and they strangely never got old. Each time I saw one I thought that it would be a great movie, with clear themes of mentoring and coming of age it had potential. My favourite film of last year, The Way Way Back, featured both of these themes and I was hoping for a similar experience of enjoyment.

Unfortunately like many films before it St. Vincent just doesn’t stand up to the trailers, 95% of the laughs are featured in the trailer and there isn’t much left to enjoy when these play out. Whoever thought that a pregnant Naomi Watts pole dancing would be funny needs to take themselves away and think long and hard about this decision, I didn’t appreciate this ‘humour’. The film was quite boring for the first half of the running time, I found it really hard to invest in any of the characters. I understand that we aren’t meant to like all of the characters straight away but I was desperately searching for someone to care about in this movie and I just couldn’t find them, well for about the first hour anyway. Investing in the characters was hard enough but the almost pointless characters were worse. Terrence Howard’s character Zucko seemed to be simultaneously pointless and unconvincing, his involvement baffled me, no fault of Howards though. I thought that the inevitable montage of bonding between Vincent (Bill Murray) and Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) came too soon and I couldn’t fully buy into or enjoy it. As the film progressed I could see other characters and relationships that I wanted to be explored further and I assumed that they were going to be neglected is space of Vincent and Olivers’ but to my surprise they weren’t, this was when the film took a turn for the better.

Certain events take place and relationships develop that allows for the investment into characters to come more naturally and once this happened I could finally enter into the story and enjoy it. There are some moments that will be sure to bring a smile to your face and things do begin to piece together nicely it’s just a shame it took so long. The second half of the film builds well to a really touching finale which draws you in a lot more than you would expect to be especially after having to sit through the initial scenes of the movie. It was nice to see Melissa McCarthy in a role where she didn’t portray a disgusting female character, I hope to see more of this in the future for her too. Bill Murray delivers here and especially in the second half of the film where he gets to show his versatility in his acting talent. Lieberher does well and convinces as Oliver who probably ends up being the most likeable character amongst them all.

St. Vincent takes far too long to get going and is by no means one of the better films dealing with the themes that it does however there are some golden moments. If you can stick with this film you will be rewarded as the finale in a way makes up for the rest of the film as you quickly forget the boredom you experienced because you are just so taken in with this heartfelt ending.

BIGGEST FLAW – Takes too long to become intereting

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Successfully exploring several relationships not just one

Rating – 6.5/10