The Estate - Dean Craig's black comedy

Dean Craig's black comedy has not been successful enough: despite regularly touching on public provocation, its disturbing jokes remain too nasty to function. At the end of the film, the audience simply chuckles at the fact that he remembered to go to the movies.

The characters are introduced in the main title through old-fashioned, clownish animation evocative comedies. However, just as jokes can't hit more than the sloppy language of such series in retrospect, this caricatural presentation fails (and now even the laughing of the built-in audience doesn't help us perceive what should be hilarious).

However, the story of scoundrels attempting to inherit the money of a dying millionaire is a traditional comic scheme, and if we only got the humorous circumstances supplied by the narrative template, we would be more satisfied - in this case, they are not successful enough either.

Toni Collette and Anna Faris played siblings with radically different personalities as Macey and Savanna to make a dynamic leading combo. While the latter is carefree and dishonest, her divorced sister is considerably more careful and moral, albeit less open: she is working on regaining trust and embracing happiness.

As a result, it is no surprise that Savanna will conclude that their only option for saving the family restaurant, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, is their enormously wealthy aunt. So the old woman's estranged sister, the kids' mother, decided to pay her a visit and ask if the elder Hilda (Kathleen Turner) would include them in her will.

But, upon arrival at the lovely villa, they discover that they were too late; they were not the only ones who thought of taking immoral advantage of the circumstance. Beatrice (Rosemarie Dewitt), their cousin, has already moved in to secure her place in Aunt Hilda's bequest, and Richard (David Duchovny) arrives in his Porsche, unable to stop his incestuous advances on Macey.

If this comedy manages to be so grey, it's fair to say that The Estate reflects a current problem in British and American filmmaking: a symptom of a tape-based attitude in which the script follows textbook steps, the creators treat filming purely as a job, and actors stop by on weekends off for pocket money. We hope they had a good time making the film since audiences will be bored watching it.

Post by Bryan C.