Reach Me

Mediocre verging on bad. It's not a great film by any means, but there are some interesting performances including a very impressive and scene-elevating Stallone, a humorous Cary Elwes, and a cool Thomas Jane in a role that could have its own prequel character film. The rest of the scenes feature a whole host of has-beens; Nelly, Kyra Sedgwick, Kelsey Grammer, Tom Sizemore, Danny Trejo, Danny Aiello, Terry Crews and Tom Berenger not really doing much.

Reach Me is clearly a work made by connections and acquaintances due to a lack of money. This can be seen in a few scenes (but also as I know it was briefly a Kickstarter project); Stallone gets Chuck Zito, his brother Frank, and even his daughter, Scarlet Rose, roles in the movie to keep costs down for his director friend, John Herzfeld, and the producer, Cassian Elwes, gets his brother a role. The film pays the price for this way of producing a film, especially when the plot is just plain bad. The editing and camera work is pretty much awful. The first 20 minutes seemed like he was intentionally having people walk in-front of the camera in most shots, which made it really hard to focus on the proceedings.

It is great to see Stallone in a film where he shines for a change. Berenger plays the agoraphobic rather well, but Stallone does a better job. It would be nice to see Sly take more supporting roles in the future, but hopefully they're not in such preachy, Sunday afternoon, TV-level movies such as Reach Me.

C-

I loved this. I had this on my computer to watch for at least over half a year, and held off from watching it, because it didn't seem very good. Trailer wasn't very convincing, and the only thing it seemed to have going for it was a string of well known actors. But it's so much more than that. No doubt the film is very pleasantly cast, but what makes the film stand out for me is it's feel goodness. It's cute, funny, and romantic all in one. It just made me smile for the most part, because of the comedic situations that are not intentionally trying to make you laugh. There's just a subtle comedic thread throughout the film that kept me all smiles (no, I was not high when watching it).
It has a great score too, blending in well with the scope of the film, and it's cinematography is well done too. The film just doesn't really misfire on anything, and I had a really good time watching it. There's a few quips, in that Nelly is pretty annoying, he's just not an actor, even while he's pretty much playing himself it doesn't work. But all the rest of the cast was great, showing pretty much they had a good time with role. From Terry Crews to Kevin Murphy, Jane and Stallone I enjoyed all their performances. And I shouldn't forget Lauren Cohan, wow, loved her in this.


There's also a scene or two that didn't work for me, and it surely is no epic film in any way, but for what it's trying to be it just works so well. A low key small film, that's just a very entertaining watch.

A-