The idea of a saccharine sweet, Mary Poppins-esque school teacher leading a double life as a gun-toting vigilante is a great starting off point for a subversive black comedy.
Unfortunately, "Miss Manners" never gets very far past this strong basic idea. It's not funny enough to work as a black comedy, not interesting or dynamic enough to work as a straight character study/drama, not weird or brave enough to work as a David Lynchian suburban fable and not exciting, action-packed, or shocking enough to work as a cult/horror/fun/late-night/midnight madness type movie. It seems to be kind of aiming for all of those targets, but ends up hitting none of them. The result, despite the promising premise, is a very bland, vanilla, and ultimately pretty uninteresting movie.
Katie Holmes is perfectly fine in the leading role and seems to pull off this kind of character very well. The problem isn't her or her character but the fact that they really don't give her very much to do or really any interesting obstacles to face.
The story unfolds very predictably and we don't get any kind of dynamic examination of this main character beyond the reveal of her very cliché and completely expected back story.
It all feels very paint-by-numbers, very black and white, and ends up feeling pretty tame. A movie like this needs to have real teeth and attitude behind it and this film really has zero of either. The main character is never put in any interesting moral predicaments or forced to make any tough choices, and that's really an essential element in a story like this one.
Like I said, I really liked the set up and concept of this movie and even the introduction of the film;s main character--but was ultimately disappointed with the bland and lackluster way they were handled.
Unfortunately, "Miss Manners" never gets very far past this strong basic idea. It's not funny enough to work as a black comedy, not interesting or dynamic enough to work as a straight character study/drama, not weird or brave enough to work as a David Lynchian suburban fable and not exciting, action-packed, or shocking enough to work as a cult/horror/fun/late-night/midnight madness type movie. It seems to be kind of aiming for all of those targets, but ends up hitting none of them. The result, despite the promising premise, is a very bland, vanilla, and ultimately pretty uninteresting movie.
Katie Holmes is perfectly fine in the leading role and seems to pull off this kind of character very well. The problem isn't her or her character but the fact that they really don't give her very much to do or really any interesting obstacles to face.
The story unfolds very predictably and we don't get any kind of dynamic examination of this main character beyond the reveal of her very cliché and completely expected back story.
It all feels very paint-by-numbers, very black and white, and ends up feeling pretty tame. A movie like this needs to have real teeth and attitude behind it and this film really has zero of either. The main character is never put in any interesting moral predicaments or forced to make any tough choices, and that's really an essential element in a story like this one.
Like I said, I really liked the set up and concept of this movie and even the introduction of the film;s main character--but was ultimately disappointed with the bland and lackluster way they were handled.