About Alex (2014)

This movie has a great cast. It is a surprisingly lovely take on the issue of suicide. My daughter and I have watched it about a dozen times.

Fmovies: My bias before viewing was an expectation of a massive boring failure that I would regret watching because it dealt with attempted suicide. I couldn't have been more mistaken. My reticence in watching was duly derived from substantial repetitive experiences from most all films of this type: one location with characters you never really get to know, complex back stories left unexplained, and dark subject matter. What a surprise was in store for me! In fact the sole reason drawing me to the film was the beautiful & talented Maggie Grace and a growing appreciation for Jason Ritter.

Friendship in a time where Facebook & texting have relegated meeting & talking to the fate that cd's rendered the 8 track, is a constant presence in my thoughts. So, it was invigorating to see college friends nearing 30 come together to support a friend, traveling from across the country for a whirlwind philosophical, confrontational, emotive, supportive & well paced weekend of collective personal growth. There were just enough characters to keep every minute fresh with information & few enough to not gloss over any single character & give each a quality part in the story without getting lost. This movie was extremely dynamic and as such, had no lulls.

It's been said, "what a difference a day makes". Lucky for the viewer, a weekend of real, old-fashioned, interpersonal exploration & reflection makes one powerful movie. There wasn't a single moral. There were many. Whether you experienced college or high school, or were close with your neighborhood friends, this movie will without a doubt hit home for you. It was interesting how the friends had achieved varied levels of societal & romantic success, yet fell right back into the rhythm of their group identities like only a summer had passed. This will be a familiar feeling to everyone. It wasn't a love fest full of sympathy & crying on shoulders, which would be totally natural & expected. It was engrossing because of the diversity of honest feelings & reactions that made the viewer easily identify with each character. All actors were grade A, & I look forward to enjoying their acting in future films. Ritter, his best friend, & Grace were the standouts & I was relieved to see Aubrey Plaza tone down her typical sarcastic personality. In doing so, she made her character more appealing & closer to the personalities of the collective cast.

I think viewers on average will rate this movie ranging from 6-9/10, but as you can see for me it hammered home an expectation-defying 8/10. I highly recommend this movie as a modern adaptation of "The Big Chill" without the killer soundtrack. It was as informative and enjoyable as much as it was provocative and insightful.

Knox D. Alford, III

Yes it is basically a remake of The Big Chill, but different in the sense that these people are younger than those characters. Not only that, the actors look even younger than they are supposed to be. Well, another depiction of Godless millennials who don't believe in anything, and fall apart due to the petty, neurotic emptiness of their lives. But movie people write about what they know, so don't be surprised. Having said that, the physical setting is beautiful, the acting is genuine and snappy, and the suicide theme is not milked too hard. Also, it does not have an obnoxious Greatest Hits of an era soundtrack like that other movie had. Thankfully. They could have created more original, complex, and nuanced characters than these cliched ones. But I guess they wanted to keep it light. No one manufactures anything or fixes anything. They all work in service and money related professions. No one served in the military or speaks of volunteer work or religion, although one gal works at a suicide prevention center. Although they were too self-absorbed to notice the warning signs that their friend was in trouble, they were caring enough to show up to support him later. The worst mistake of the script was not giving us a bit more back story on why our attempted suicide guy was so unhappy.

About Alex fmovies. About Alex is mainly just two hours too many to spend with characters who aren't compelling and generally act like selfish jerks. Our title character is pushed to the background and probably has the least lines of anyone. It's almost hilarious how swept aside and incidental the character Alex is in a movie called "About Alex." One gets the impression that we're meant to feel bad for him, but he's still more of a plot device than a person with a complex, nuanced personality. Most of the film dwells on the ridiculous neuroses of the other characters, which lack authenticity or originality of any kind. Drama that would be better suited to a TV sitcom than a feature length movie. Yes, the fumbling discomfort of the characters as they try to deal with Alex's attempt is something we can all sympathize with, but this is the beginning and the end of my emotional participation in this story. I have a major weakness for quirky suicide movies, but it's so important for the audience to feel something for this to work at all as the basis for a movie. Suicide is a serious subject, which About Alex seems to grasp. Although the act itself is sensationalized, it is treated with some reverence. Looking at suicide through a bizarre filter can make it easier to break down, accept, understand, but I think a strong connection between the audience and the victim is key for this to work. Overall, About Alex is pseudo-philosophical, tepid and boring. It doesn't hit the right notes emotionally and it's simply not warm enough, intimate enough, close enough. A film with a similar premise, which although not perfect itself, comes nearer to accomplishing what About Alex seems to be striving for, is A Beautiful Now. My advice is to avoid About Alex like the plague, and check that out instead; at least A Beautiful Now is interesting.

It hits all the right issues about modern isolation and the nature of friendship, but it hits on them only tangentially and without any depth. And it doesn't really use its theme to its advantage very well. If there's one very positive thing I can say about this movie it's that once a scene gets going it starts to really get going. And then the scene ends way too soon and we're left with a sense of incompleteness. It's as if the director didn't want the players to do too much "acting" to get in the way.

The set-up is weakly explained, the relationship dynamics are barely believable, and the resolution is too neatly tied up. But if you like some of the actors, it will be a pleasant if not terribly worthwhile experience. Overall, it was a missed opportunity to explore how technological progress has affected how we make and sustain friendships in a post-Big Chill world.

I just saw this movie and I am really hoping that many people will go see it. While I found myself comparing it to the Big Chill in several spots, the characters do a good job at making it their own. The casting is incredible. I was fully immersed in the story, hoping for certain outcomes in the character's lives, feeling deeply for some, finding comedic relief in others. Being that the attempted suicide by one member of this group of friends is at the heart of this "reunion", I have to applaud Jesse Zwick for not only taking it on, but for also not shying away from showing the many layers of human emotion that surround it ... the misunderstandings, outrage, fear and blame, guilt, and above all love and forgiveness, and hopefully different choices that can be made as an outcome. Good job to the new director/screen writer. You had me at hello.