Lemon 2017

     A man is watching his life unravel after his girlfriend of 10 years leaves him!!  A lemon is a person or think that proves to be defective, imperfect or unsatisfactory.  Isaac Lachmann is a dud as a person and he is 40 years old.  He is a man in free fall and immobilized by mediocrity.  His career is going nowhere and his overbearing family doesn’t help matters.  He wonders what he did to deserve this??  He had big dreams and life was supposed to turn out differently for him??  He didn’t expect this kind of life and to watch it unravel as time moves on??  The first third of Lemon can be entertaining but it tells us very little about the main character Isaac.  Then, it simply maintains a pulse for the remainder of the film??  What I did not like was that Isaac is basically an unappealing character, how can you generate sympathy for him??  There is some unneeded talk about violent or gruesome acts but they are not shown??  A phone falls into a toilet that isn’t flushed and there is a pair of dead birds.  These scenes are unnecessary and only for shock value!!!  A LOT of racial slurs and more poop as if the toilet episode wasn’t enough??  1 1/2* (I really didn’t like this movie)

83 min, Comedy directed by Janicza Bravo and written by Brett Gelman and Janicza Bravo with Brett Gelman, Judy Greer, Michael Cera, Gillian Jacobs, Jeff Darlin, Kayla Harrity, Shiri Appleby, Megan Mullally, Robin McDonald, Nia Long, Jon Daly, Hank Chen, Rhea Perlman, Fred Melamed, Elizabeth De Razzo.

Note:  Imdb 4.8 out of 10* with 12,446 views, Rotten Tomatoes 46% with 45 critics 31% with 772 user ratings, Roger Ebert 2* Sheila O’Malley, Metacritic 59 out of 100 with 20 critics (9 positive, 9 mixed 2 negative) 5.8 out of 10 with 8 user scores (4 positive, 2 mixed, 2 negative), Common Sense Media Jeffrey M. Anderson, age 15+, 2* violence, 3* sex, 4* language, 3* drinking, drugs & smoking, Amazon 2.6* out of 5* with 46 reviews.

Special Note:  Writer/director Janicza Bravo and writer/actor Brett Gelman are married in real life.  When the movie premiered, their families had not seen the film yet.  Their families learned that they are portrayed as dysfunctional!!  I wonder what kind of reaction they had??  That may be better than the film!!  The world premiere was held at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.