{"id":7005,"date":"2024-10-25T11:44:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7005"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:44:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:44:43","slug":"ordinary-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/ordinary-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordinary Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ordinary Love<\/strong> (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (brief sexuality\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lisa Barros D\u2019Sa and Glenn Leyburn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Owen McCafferty\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Holmes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Piers McGrail\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 28, 2020 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lesley Manville, Liam Neeson, David Wilmot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $774,877 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once again I find myself faced with not liking a film that all the other critics love. Ordinary Love<\/strong> has a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 73 rating on Metacritic. I don\u2019t get it. The movie I saw is boring, depressing and goes nowhere. It moves at the pace of somebody running in place in wet cement and is about as interesting to watch. The only thing that saves it from complete failure is solid performances from both leads. Even with that, it\u2019s still a waste of 92 minutes that could be spent sorting coupons, cleaning grout or rearranging your sock drawer. Anything, root canal included, is preferable to watching Ordinary Love<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Liam Neeson (Taken) and Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) play Tom and Joan, an old married couple with an affectionate relationship. Life has had its ups and downs. Their only child, a daughter, died about ten years earlier. They don\u2019t appear to have any family or friends. There\u2019s a real sadness to their existence. Then Joan finds a lump in her breast. She goes for tests. The results aren\u2019t good. It\u2019s breast cancer. She\u2019ll have to undergo a double mastectomy followed by chemo. The chemo, of course, will make her sick. Tom, ever the dutiful husband, steps us as primary caretaker. It won\u2019t be easy, but love will see them through it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s not as if I missed the point of Ordinary Love<\/strong>. I totally get it. It shows the effect terminal illness has on a couple who already experienced tragedy on a large scale. The loss of a child of ANY age is devastating. This latest bit of bad news brings it all back. It also shows how hard it is for somebody to take care of a critically ill loved one. Everybody is so focused on the patient\u2019s pain and misery, they tend not to notice what those closest to the afflicted are going through. It\u2019s a mix of fear, grief, helplessness, sorrow, exhaustion, resentment and guilt over the anger they feel towards the sick person who is almost surely going away. I get all that. Hell, I went through it with my mother. As such, I should have been able to make a personal connection with Ordinary Love<\/strong>. I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Both Neeson and Manville deliver perfectly measured performances. He conveys exactly what it\u2019s like watching a loved suffer and not being able to do anything other than offer words of comfort. Manville is even better with how she imbues her character with delicacy and strength. She may be suffering, but she can still find it in her to offer kind words to a young woman about to undergo her first chemo treatment. In one truly effective scene, all the negative feelings that Tom and Joan have been keeping bottled up explode to the surface. It\u2019s an honest moment that would mean more in a better movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For all its good intentions, Ordinary Love<\/strong> is just too dull and dreary. I know, a movie about a woman with breast cancer isn\u2019t supposed to be vibrant and bright. But it should at least be interesting, right? I struggled to stay awake throughout. It doesn\u2019t really go anywhere either. When it was finally over, I didn\u2019t feel like anything was resolved. Was Joan cured? Is the cancer gone? Or have they both made peace with her imminent demise? Did I miss something? What am I supposed to make of this? I have no idea. At the end, I felt only relief. If this makes me sound shallow, so be it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ordinary Love (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (brief sexuality\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lisa Barros D\u2019Sa and Glenn Leyburn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Owen McCafferty\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Holmes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Piers McGrail\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 28, 2020 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lesley Manville, Liam Neeson, David Wilmot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $774,877 (US) Rating: ** \u00a0Once again I find myself faced with not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Ordinary-Love-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7326,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions\/7326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}