'The Dinner,' Overcooked And Underseasoned
In this tale of two couples struggling with a moral dilemma, strong performances get drowned in endless flashbacks and needless backstory that render the central drama flavorless.
The screen version of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a acknowledged classic, a subtly stylized and beautifully acted drama about two couples going through a booze-soaked dark-night-of-the-soul. Would it be improved by flashbacks to the couples' stormy past? Would it be improved by flashbacks to some needlessly obfuscated criminal incident? Would it be improved by allusions to Gettysburg? Of course not.
Yet here is , director intensity and consequentiality that it's been dancing around for over 90 minutes. And it gets there through the utter simplicity of four great actors directly addressing the elephant in the room. That's drama. There's often no point in complicating it.
