Oscar Isaac and Ulysses the cat from ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

Oy. Inside Llewyn Davis gets old really quick. You know a movie is bad when you find yourself leaning forward a lot to rest your back, and checking your watch.  I’m thinking the supposed popularity of the Coen brothers, is much like that of the folk music hero hinted at near the end of the movie, Robert Zimmerman, the joke’s on us. I’ve seen a lot of that lately, what with American Hustle, Wolf of Wall Street, etc… crap served up that we are supposed to “ooh and awe” over, when in reality it is theater that has not been thought out really well, or had much effort put into it. No longer, bad is bad, even if the “right” people did make it.

Unable to figure out what I had just seen, I checked out the reviews on IMDB. Many reviewers thought Ethan and Joel Coen keep making the same movie with the same clichés. Many thought the “art-house crowd” would rave about anything these two put out, and if that was the case, the bar had been set way too low. They called it as having no direction, leaving threads left hanging, no character development, no point, kind of a half-baked unfinished slop.

The music was fun, the backstreets of New York were fun, Stark Sands as ‘Troy Nelson’ was superb, the interior location shots were great… it’s just that when the most likeable and entertaining character is a cat, it doesn’t bode well for the movie.

What makes a great movie? It will either come down to stars, script, or the cinematography. There was nothing likeable about the characters, the script was pointless, luckily the cinematography made the movie a 3 or so. I enjoy seeing the off the beaten path side of New York, the architecture and landscape you don’t normally see. But, if you’ve been making movies for 30 years, with all the attendant adulation, you need to come up with just a little bit more. I want my money back.