Movie Review: The Lobster (2016)

This review might be a bit weird but it’s hard because this movie is weird. So bear with me here. This may be more of my thoughts… than a review lol but still, yeah.

Summary: In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

Pros:

Cast and Characters. There are a lot of people in this film, but I’m going to really only talk about maybe four or five of them because they’re the ones that really are in the film, at least enough to make an impact on me as the viewer.

• Colin Farrell as David. Sometimes, I’m curious about him as an actor, I think it depends on the film and the character. He’s not a bad actor but I wouldn’t immediately think of him when someone says ‘name a good actor’, but this role surprised me. His character is a bit strange, his marriage just ended and now he’s going to “the hotel” where he has to find love in 45 days or be turned into an animal of his choice, which is a lobster. So, he spends his time in the hotel trying to connect to a woman to prevent becoming a lobster. After a while, he reaches a breaking point and escapes to the woods where others who have escaped the hotel. He spends a lot of the movie a bit quiet and odd (but they all are odd lol). I think Farrell does a great job in this role, he was a bit unsettling but one of the only characters I liked.

• Rachel Weisz as Nearsighted Woman. She comes in the second half of the film, she was one of the loners and she is also the narrator of the film. Also strange, but she and Colin Farrell meet and they have a connection. Rachel Weisz put on this harsher voice which I thought was hilarious and she was also a bit monotone. Hilarious. I liked her too, I felt bad for her at the end though.

• Lea Seydoux as Loner Leader. So strange, she is the leader of the loners. Of the people who manage to escape the hotel, they live in the woods. Unlike the hotel staff, she forbids romance, otherwise terrible things happen. It’s a bit overkill honestly. She is very hard to understand which I think is the reason why she works so well because there is absolutely no explanation for her.

• John C. Reilly as Lisping Man. I like him sometimes, he’s not always funny to me, but I like when he’s not playing an obviously funny character because thats when I find him at his best. He did really well here, the viewer can easily feel really bad for him and that lisp is hilarious. He, the Limping Man and David are all friends in the beginning but as time goes on and people are being paired off, or turned into animals we see him, along with David, get a bit more desperate.

• Ben Whishaw as Limping Man. I find this dude creepy, he’s a great actor but I find him so unsettling and he was still unsettling here. I think it’s that smile he gives lol. But he is looking for love in the hotel, and he’s looking for someone who has a limp like him, as they encourage people to find a person with something similar to them. So he does something pretty terrible to do that and it actually seems to fit quite well with his personalty because he seems to almost… evolve into something else, that was obviously an extension of him.

The story. It’s really weird. I mean, I can’t even really say what the movie is about and talk about the story without giving it away. However, I think it’s really interesting and unique but I do think some people will not like it. It has this dark sarcastic humor to it, it’s kind of dark in some ways. I get the overall idea, I liked it but it’s strange.

The Cinematography. Thimios Bakatakis is the cinematographer and the way the film looks is beautiful. It has this murky gray tone, to show the mundane world they live in now. This is not a world someone would actually want to live in and I think the way the film is captured shows that.

The ending. I think this could go either way for the viewer, my thoughts on the ending varied from my coworker who loved the film way more than me, but it’s left open ended which for a film like this works. It allows the viewer to infer what they think happened based on what they know of David’s character.

Cons:

Really Long/Tedious. I do think the movie is a bit too long. It’s good but after a while, it feels like it should have ended like 20 minutes ago but it’s still going. Then the ending is also a bit prolonged, I mean I get it, but I thought it needed to be a bit shorter.

The dog scene. Really, unnecessary. Ugh, we saw enough to know what happened to him, we didn’t need to see it.

Overall, it took me a long time before I decided to this review because I could not figure out how I felt about this film. I mean I liked it, I think it’s a really good movie, but it’s still really weird. It’s one of those WTF movies, it’s also an acquired taste. I’m sure there will be a lot of people who don’t like it, who will not like it, which is fine. I think the cinematography is great, the directing choices is great, I liked the actors and characters, they were interesting. I didn’t particularly care for the dog scene, I wish they didn’t show that only because sometimes “less is more” lol and I think it’s a bit long but otherwise, The Lobster is a fantastic film.

Rating: 4.49 out of 5 stars.