Okay, seriously, where's the punchline? Where is it? Really, none? This film tries to make a big statement about how life gives you "punchlines" but where is its own? I was very much expecting to see "Directed by Mel Brooks" as the very first credit after this unbelievably psychotic reel of film ended. WAITING FOR FOREVER is the first independent romantic comedy I've seen that flats out says that Rebecca Schaeffer should have given Robert John Bardo a chance at love.
It is disturbingly inept how everyone who worked on this movie didn't second guess anything written by Steve Adams. We are supposed to cheer, cheer an unemployed, barely beyond novice-level juggler (Tom Sturridge) who wears pajamas all the time to finally get his childhood sweetheart (Rachel Bilson). A love so powerful that he stalked her all over the entire Western Coast just to be constantly around her own life. Documenting every near-miss with extensive details and looking back at their memories as kids repeatedly when he is not talking aloud in open space. This pure nightmare fuel shouldn't have made passed the development stage, let alone the first draft. Adams seemingly couldn't accept reason and true understanding so he decided to mock his detractors' arguments with many throwaway scenes and even brought in another mentally imbalanced individual to woo the stiff and shallow woman. All of this and director James Keach and his five other producers were gung-ho to film this application for the insane asylum?
Oh, the horrors of contractual arraignments and performing when the material is maddening to behold. It is very sad that the several supporting players, all of them very talented, can't numb the absolute pain delivered. They try to hide the colossal negatives and expand the positives, mainly their own side stories and brief sequences. It could have been interesting to instead watch a movie of a talentless actress expertly playing a talentless actress who comes home to experience the final stages of her parents' decaying and disease-ridden marriage. Richard Jenkins and Blythe Danner truly waste their expert talents, especially Jenkins who defies his dying body to strangulate a suitor hard when he hurts his daughter in a refreshing scene. But Keach and Adams don't like gravitas and real emotions, only more moments of deranged love affairs.
From the sheer absurdity of being heavily sentimental to its misogynistic portrayal of women being aloof dullards, WAITING FOR FOREVER is total carnage to a person's mental well-being. You sit there viewing two awful actors, most notably Sturridge, performing from a deadly script with no wink or nudge to its moral shortcomings. If this story ended up being the dream of a pretty boy clown in a padded room, this would have the best horror film of the year. Sorry, no such luck and no punchline.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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