Watch August Osage County 2013 Full Movie

Watch August Osage County 2013 Full Movie

Since I never caught the theatrical run of August: Osage County, I'm just going to have to assume that Tracy Letts's dark comedy chronicling the most dysfunctional family reunion ever deserved its many stage awards -- which ranged from Pulitzer Prizes to Tonys. Lord knows that the movie version isn't at all a good advertisement for whatever the virtues of the play might have been.

Gracelessly directed by John Wells and wildly overacted by its all-star ensemble cast, this is one of those creative misfires that makes you feel terrible for everyone involved, as well as yourself for having to sit through it.In the grand tradition of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, August traps viewers inside a single location that it rarely leaves. In this case, that location is the home of the Weston clan, whose patriarch (played onscreen by Sam Shepard, wisely picking a role that gets him in and out of the movie as fast as possible) has recently taken his own life, requiring his three grown daughters -- Barbara (Julia Roberts), Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) and Karen (Juliette Lewis) -- to help their bitter, tart-tongued harridan of a mother, Violet (Meryl Streep), through the funeral.watch full movie

 While spinster-to-be Ivy still lives at home, her siblings have to truck in from out of town and bring their various family members along for the festivities. Thus Barbara shows up with her husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) and their teen daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin), while flighty, serial dater Karen has her latest boyfriend (Dermot Mulroney) in tow. Also present is Violet's sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale), wife of Charlie (Chris Cooper) and mother of shy "Little" Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch), who -- unbeknownst to the rest of the family -- is carrying on an affair with cousin Ivy. It's a secret that, as you might imagine, will cause some major third act tsuris.But there are plenty of other headaches to go around, most of them caused by the characters' sheer, unrelenting nastiness towards each other.watch full movie

 More than anything, August seems to be a spoof of one of those warm, inviting down home Southern reunions depicted in pop culture where a multigenerational family shares a few laughs, sheds a few tears and learns a few lessons. There's no such sweetness and sympathy written into Letts's text and I'd be curious to know if the stage production played up the material's inherent satirical element, especially as the various family melodramas spiral into seemingly deliberate absurdity as the narrative goes along. In a major miscalculation, though, Wells (whose background is primarily in TV shows like ER and post-Sorkin The West Wing) appears to have taken the play seriously; either that or his comic timing is seriously out of whack. There's leadenness to the way the action is blocked and the actors are directed that drains much of the humor out of the movie -- even lines that are clearly intended to be funny fail to land. Even worse, as August arrives at its ear-splitting crescendo, the director strains to play the family's final falling-out as tragedy rather than farce.

 (Though, again, if that's the way the stage version approached it, than the fault lies as much with the song as it does the singer.)Wells's biggest sin, however, is wasting this impressive ensemble who would have benefitted from a strong directorial hand to function as a single unit. (Just imagine what Robert Altman might have done with this cast and this material!) Based on the finished product, their director left them to sink or swim on their own, which is why they all seem to be performing in wildly different keys. While Streep screeches and stomps around the frame, Roberts snarls all of her dialogue, Nicholson disappears into the wallpaper

 Lewis recycles her Old School character and McGregor, Cooper, Breslin and Cumberbatch all wander around looking vaguely lost. The only performer who seems interested in actually playing a character as opposed to a heightened personality type is Martindale, whose role unfortunately seems truncated, particularly in the second half when Mattie Fae becomes integral to the big, family-imploding secret. (The film version is an hour shorter than the play and a fair amount does appear to have been jettisoned between stage and screen. Then again, the last thing this movie needed to be was longer.) Clearly calculated to win Oscars, August: Osage County instead feels more worthy of a Razzie or two