A Home at the End of the World | Review

Film redefines family and explores the limits of love triangles.

The film commences with a whimsical tribute that sees an older brother showing his little brother, Bobby what the world holds, thanks in due part to some psychedelic substances. It’s a short sequence that ends with a shattering tragic outcome – one that unfairly repeats itself in this young man’s life. Push forward into the 70’s, where early teenage development includes some more experimentation not just with music, hair and cool jackets but with the next door neighbor’s teenage boy. Michael Cunningham’s openingly liberal text and gay subtext explores the essence of home, through the course of the film we see Bobby replace his lost family with the one belonging to his best friend. Based on the novel of the same name, A Home at the End of the World is the journey of a young man with the mind of an infant. The adult Bobby played by Colin Farrell (Intermission) is the type who desperately needs to be nurtured and his lost gaze spells free love and Woodstock. Once he re-connects with his the boy he grew so strongly attached to (Dallas Roberts) there is a big rift followed by emotional tremors and their re-union might have pushed them apart for a second time but the blood-colored red-haired girl who resides in the New York loft (Robin Wright Penn – The Singing Detective) brings the two closer together, thanks to a bigger belly.

Michael Mayer’s directorial debut could have easily resulted in this year’s American Beauty, but instead of delivering a full out punch, the narrative seems to be as confused as the film’s lead character – thus failing to bring out or include complex, emotional layers from the one-dimensional characters. Effectively quirky at times, emotionally touching during some spurts but vacantly empty for the better part, this uneven drama lays the on the charm in the film’s earlier stages with the yummy sampling of nostalgia, but as it builds itself into a promising life-tale about the yearning for home it turns into a yawn-filled experience. This performance-driven film will do a lot of good to show the range in Colin Farrell’s acting skills and Sissy Spacek (In the Bedroom) as the cool mom is a delight but is unfortunately kept as a secondary character. While a great casting job was done for Farrell’s Bobby character (love that fake-wig hair-do), the momentum gets lost with the dialogue loses all emotional impact that was so compassionately made available in Michael Cunningham’s other novel to screen (The Hours).

While A Home at the End of the World sets out to do the right thing, it ultimately doesn’t do it often enough, short-changing its characters with moments that lack the sincerity that the film deserves. While the final shot does apply a nice, simple touch the unforgivable other stuff makes this film hard to digest. Hollywood has given us too many singing in a car bits, one too many 70’s film soundtracks, and one too many three-people-and-one-baby moments and romantic openings of a restaurants to make us care one more time.

Rating 1.5 stars