The Road - Some thoughts from an early screening

Here are some views people had after seeing an early test screening of The Road. The film sounds as if it is still unfinished, full of temp voices, missing scenes, and unfinished special FX. There is also mention of a voiceover that doesn't quite work. This all goes someway to explain why it is being pushed back to next year. AICN have a more positive review of the film. What do you think?

Source: Quiet Earth

"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."

There have been so many fantastic films that tested terribly that I don't see this as any reason to get worried about the outcome of the film. Someone more famous than me once said that "films are made in the editing room" so once all is said and done I image the film will be more in line with our expectations. Oscar worthy? Who can say but for now things aren't looking all that sweet for our beloved The Road.

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