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Win Win is an indie comedy drama that appears at first glance to have all the right ingredients. It has a very good leading man in the form of Paul Giamatti, as well as being written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (The Visitor). Therefore, the potential is here for something meaningful and deeply moving as well as being funny. Unfortunately, it only manages one of these traits.
Win Win centres around Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a caring family man with business problems whose one greedy action leads to a whole heap of problems, most notably having to look after wayward teen Kyle (Alex Shaffer). So far so good. But as soon as the movie develops, it becomes increasingly predictable and from about twenty minutes in, you know exactly where it is heading and how it will play out. Indeed, the central flaw at the heart of the film is that it feels a little clichéd as we have seen this sort of thing before, and this feels too neat and compact to ever really explore the grubby depths of its characters, so we that we never truly feel their pain or anguish. Nor is there a sense that the any of this particularly rings true with real life, so that it is lacking in either a sense of purpose or meaning, with it feeling overall a rather sanitized view of life.
All of which is a real shame because there are some good things to say about it. Most notably, the casting is excellent, with Paul Giamatti giving a sensitive leading performance as a flawed but essentially good man, while Alex Shaffer is perfectly believable as the rather awkward teenager he inherits, and none of the actors let the side down. However, at the same time, they do not get enough room to manoeuvre in order to build truly memorable characters; while they are engaging during the film, they are forgettable afterwards. The film also works in that it has an effective sense of community and family, creating a real sense of place and setting in which the whole thing is very nicely grounded, yet at the end of the day, this is not built upon in the way it could have been. Perhaps where the film works best is as a comedy, as in this it works much better than as a drama. While it never engages enough pathos to truly connect with its audience it does make them laugh, with humour maintained effectively throughout.
The essential problem with Win Win is that, unlike the best indie comedies, while making us laugh, it fails to engage our sympathy or feel natural enough to be a truly realistic scenario about real people. In the end, everything is too simple and neatly tied up to truly make the audience to get emotionally involved in the film in any significant way. That said, though, it is perfectly enjoyable but unfortunately rather forgettable.
See Win Win at City Screen, York from Friday. Check out {http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/York_Picturehouse/ the cinema's website] for times and further details.
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