Film "Serious Moonlight" deserves a serious redo

Serious Moonlight deserves a serious redo. From beginning to end, the movie leaves one with many questions and only one answer; one can breathe, "so that's what a disaster looks like."

The one hour and ten minute flick Serious Moonlight stars Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell and Justin Long.

With a traditional beginning of any romantic comedy, it shows promise. Louise (Ryan) plays the ambitious career woman with what seemed like a flawless marriage to stud Ian (Hutton). To surprise her husband with a romantic weekend, Louise drives up to find Ian at their upstate home.

Unbeknownst to Louise, Ian has spread flowers all over their house and is in the middle of writing her a letter of a different kind when Louise catches him in the act, ruins his plan and opens up an hour of ridiculous over-the-top chaos called a plot.

When Louise finds out that Ian is leaving her for a new beau Sara (Bell), she holds him hostage from flying off to France to meet Sara so they could work out their marriage issues. Her plan goes awry when the garden boy (Long) finds Ian duct taped all alone in the house and decides to rob them.

In a twisted turn of fate, Ian finds out that he really loves Louise (Ryan) and decides to stay married to Louise leaving Sara (Bell) pouting on the curb.

The movie tries to take on the romantic comedy genre from a more raw perspective where somehow duct taping your husband to a chair is perfectly normal behavior in a marriage. Louise's first reaction from her husband's announcement of leaving her isn't tears or heartbreak, but a calm face companied with stripping of duct tape and seduction with chocolate chip cookies.

It may be because her reaction isn't so run of the mill as compared to other romantic comedies, but one would hardly call her strategy an act of ingenuity, more like an act of psychotic schizophrenia.

Meg Ryan is mostly known for her earlier romantic films such as Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail, which solidified her as an adorable American sweetheart. Exiting the 90's, Ryan got a little collagen and a little crazy jumping into thriller films like In The Cut, which takes a slow and steady transition from the romantic comedy. Serious Moonlight adds to Ryan's repertoire of mistakes, just when you think she might have made a come back.

Timothy Hutton has enjoyed an illustrious career with films like The Good Shepherd and The Last Mimzy. His career not only shows longevity, but versatility as an actor, which may make one question, "Why would you do this movie?"

He does a good portrayal of a man wanting to escape; yet even when Ian tells Louise he loves her, one wouldn't really believe it. We can believe he's only saying those three words because he's afraid he'll get duct taped to death if he doesn't.

Kristin Bell has been steadily rising as an actress, and has comprised a number of lead roles in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Couple's Retreat. Bell is also starting to get comfortable with the role of being at either end of a failing relationship. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, she plays the successful girlfriend who leaves her boyfriend, while in Couple's Retreat she plays a wife wanting a divorce from her husband.

Now in Serious Moonlight she is playing the mistress. Constantly breaking up relationships seems to be Bell's specialty and frankly it's getting boring. The one thing that might have saved Serious Moonlight would have been a little more face time between Louise and Sara, maybe some yelling and some real-life reaction.

The most surprising role is that of Justin Long who plays the gardener without a name. Long's role is daring in that he has always played the safe, nerdy teenager with a kind heart.

In Serious Moonlight, he robs someone's house, beats up a man duct taped to a toilet and gropes a woman while she's passed out on the floor because he blindsided her as he was robbing the house. The fact that Long is playing the role makes it all the more unrealistic and having Long cover his face with a bandana throughout the majority of the movie may be a strategic plan to distract audience's of that strange factor.

The movie ends in a way that leaves audiences gawking at the fact that they've invested an hour and ten minutes in a mess of a movie. The gardner robbing the house takes a turn of events and the movie ends in one of those scenes that if you blink, yawn or check your phone for the time to rush out of the theater, you miss it.

Either way, Serious Moonlight has potential to be a good movie with a few more rounds of post-production edits because this film seems like it left the cutting room floor a little too early.