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'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' Is an Uninteresting Misfire with a Story That Isn't Suited for a Movie

No spoilers!

By Jonathan SimPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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Since I'm an AMC A-List member now, I have the freedom to watch a ton of movies for free; and since I'm Asian, I gotta make the most out of that deal.

Even if that means I have to watch movies like this...

Here We Go!

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is a comedy-drama written by Richard Linklater, Holly Gent, and Vincent Palmo Jr., and directed by Linklater. This film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name and it stars Cate Blanchett as Bernadette Fox.

Now, how do I describe the premise of the movie? I'll do my best; Bernadette hates people, she has anxiety, and she runs away from her problems... yes, that's the plot of the movie.

I watched this movie because it was made by Richard Linklater, the man who brought us Boyhood and the Before trilogy, so I assumed that this could be good, but I was wrong. I was dead wrong.

Before I get into that, I want to talk about what was good about this movie. First of all, Blanchett is great in this movie, as she is in virtually everything. She's really convincing as this hermit who doesn't work well with other people, and I forgot I was watching an actress because of how good she was.

My only issue with her performance is there were a few times where her American accent would sound iffy, but it's good for about 95% of the movie.

This movie also does a good job of building the relationship between Bernadette and her daughter, Bee. Their mother-daughter relationship felt very real and natural, and I thought the dialogue between them was pretty well-written.

And that just about sums up all the positives with this movie.

This movie is underwhelming. I found it to be very uninteresting and very forgettable. It was really disappointing for a Linklater film because he's made movies that are so much better than this, and this movie just isn't very good in comparison.

I really didn't think the story of this movie was good. So much time is spent on developing the character of Bernadette that the script just doesn't even really have a consistently interesting and cohesive narrative to keep the audience engaged.

What this movie needed was a balance between character development and story. But instead, this movie is very much a character movie, and because of that, I feel like the lack of a good story affected the film's quality.

This movie is also directed in a very bland way. In the Before trilogy, Linklater would film a lot of his conversation scenes with one take, but the dialogue scenes in this movie just feel very generic.

It felt like anyone could have directed this movie. There was no style to it, and nothing that could make me go, "Oh yeah, that's a Linklater film!" This movie could have been directed by a recent film school graduate and I wouldn't have been able to tell.

Now, according to this movie's Wikipedia, this movie's a "mystery comedy-drama." And I really don't think that's the right genre for this; this movie is a straight-up drama.

There's no mystery for the audience to want to be solved because WE KNOW where Bernadette is throughout the whole movie. It's only the other characters that don't know. And the comedy is VERY light, so I didn't laugh once during the entire movie.

I personally don't think this story was well-suited for a film, because this movie doesn't really have a traditional three-act structure. This movie has more of a two-act structure, where it doesn't really have an inciting incident, midpoint, and climax.

This movie's structure is more like a series of inciting incidents and then a midpoint, and there's not really a climax. And because of that, there isn't really a single memorable scene in this movie.

At the end of the day, that's my biggest problem with this movie. Not very much particularly interesting things happen throughout because it spends so much time developing its characters that it doesn't spend enough time developing a good story.

Because of that, this movie just left me with... nothing. It didn't draw any emotions from me the way a movie should (like fear, panic, happiness, etc.) and it didn't entertain me either. This is just a very disposable movie that you'll likely forget about just days after watching it.

I'm gonna give 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' a 5/10 (C-).

I don't recommend this movie. I know I say you should support original films, but this movie's not good enough for your time. This week, watch Blinded by the Light for a great story (review here) or Good Boys for some fun laughs (review here).

Thank you for reading.

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About the Creator

Jonathan Sim

Film critic. Lover of Pixar, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Back to the Future, and Lord of the Rings.

For business inquiries: [email protected]

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