Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei are absolutely fantastic in this film. Their presences on screen, individually and together, demand attention at all times. This even while struggling through a woefully pedestrian script, the expository parts of which are mind-numbingly bland. Thankfully, these two are able to rise above script. And it doesn't hurt that even made to look a bit rough as a tugboat captain, Marisa Tomei is positively gorgeous in her late 50s. But that's about where the praise slows down. The truth is, they are not on screen for nearly enough time.
There are three intertwined stories that never really quite gel cinematically (go see a John Sayles film, Lone Star, or Sunshine State to see this done masterfully). Anne Hathaway is serviceable, but in a role that could be, and largely was, phoned in. One extreme (the kreplach) scene, presumably meant to go viral, doesn't really land. Nor does the rather telegraphed final joke for her character (no spoiler).
But the anchor that drags this otherwise interesting film down is the onerous thread of the star-crossed teens. A bad script with supreme talent (Dinklage and Tomei), leaves a film short of its potential but passable. A bad script with dull and listless young actors is a recipe for an atrocious afterschool special. The ham-fisted symbolism of the father's Civil War re-enactments (isn't that really just cosplay, though?) and the 'futurism' of the teens gets hammered home. There were audible shifts from the audience with whom I watched, as scenes changed from the dynamism of the leads to the lethargy of the teen story. The biggest problem with this is that the audience needs to care about these two young people and their future. And we just don't.
Unfortunately, the three threads are needed to make the story come around full circle in the end. Only one thread is compelling with Dinklage and Tomei. Hathaway's thread had potential but ultimately was just tangential, and the teens' thread was a burden to endure to necessitate the final act. And all this and overwrought opera presentations, not good enough to be worthy of praise, but not quite so obviously parodic to garner laughter. Perhaps that's symbolic of the film itself, middling. Dinklage and Tomei deserved better.
