Hmmmm… Først kommer en mengde rapporter (her, her) om at produsent Harvey Weinstein har utsatt premieren på John Hillcoats The Road til neste år. Årsaken skal være at filmen ikke på langt nær er ferdig, det trass i at den var en av Weinsteins store Oscar-kandidater i høst. Men så tok det hele en ny vending.

I går hadde filmen testvisning i New York, og de er udelt negative. Veldig negative. Riktignok må det sies, – som flere av kommentarene også gir uttrykk for; testvisninger er til for å påpeke denne typen ting, og filmen disse omtaler later på ingen måte til å være ferdig. La oss derfor krysse fingrene, og håpe at Hillcoat & co tar med seg tilbakemeldingene tilbake til klippesuiten. Alt ligger jo til rette for at dette skal bli en helt makeløs film, noe jeg personlig fortsatt er overbevist om at det blir! Klikk deg videre for et sammendrag av de ganske så hatske kommentarene, samt en som er strålende fornøyd med det han fikk se.
"The introduction is awful, featuring a roughly five-minute montage of repetitive scenery as the opening credits roll cross-cut with out-of-chronological-order flashbacks to Charlize Theron (who is awful). Theron has four short scenes, starting out as a goddess in a perfect world eating ripe strawberries degrading into madness. It’s hard to present such a perfect ideal’s degradation into misery in five minutes. Such little thought was put into her character that she might as well be cut from the final print."

"The scenery, make-up, and overall atmosphere are exactly as they should be, and the director really successfully shows the author’s vision on the screen."

"There are continuous, stock shots of the father and son trudging across the dismal countryside punctuated by set pieces which were more often than not pretty well-done, specifically the fallout shelter and old man scenes. However these set pieces always alternated between happy and sad, leading to that annoying episodic feeling. This is what it was like: Father & Son Walk ==> Sad Set Piece ==> Walk ==> Happy Set Piece ==> Repeat ad nauseum"

"The first fifteen minutes or so are perhaps somewhat disjointed as it’s very flashback-y for a while, and for a time I was worried the movie was going to put too much emphasis on Charlize. Because it keeps jumping back and forth, it takes a bit to establish the bleak world we’re in, and I thought maybe they could have spread these flashbacks out more. But once the movie really gets going, it finds an excellent rhythm for a very long time."

"I think there was one positive element to the experience, and that’s Nick Cave’s score, and it sounded like he had only completed three or four tracks for the whole thing and they looped it as temp."

"Harvey Weinstein was at the screening, and he left early- whatever that means, I’ll leave to the pundits. But not only is the film unfinished for its supposed November release date, it’s also a complete fiasco on every creative level."

"Not a single scene worked. Not one. I imagine they can fix it in some way, in editing, but they can’t recast the distracting supporting players, and there’s only so much they can reshoot. Maybe too early to tell, but from what I could see, it’s got the makings of a massive disappointment."

Til slutt foreslår jeg at du tar deg turen over hit, og leser en ganske så annen reaksjon.