{"id":54049,"date":"2022-07-18T12:29:47","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T16:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=54049"},"modified":"2022-07-18T12:30:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-18T16:30:09","slug":"where-the-crawdads-sing-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/07\/where-the-crawdads-sing-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Crawdads Sing \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cWhere the Crawdads Sing\u201d is being pushed as one of those literary adaptations that kicks off a whole litany of adaptations. We had magic and fantasy with \u201cHarry Potter,\u201d supernatural romances with \u201cTwilight,\u201d dystopian ordeals with \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d and that weird trend of relationships complicated by increasingly rare diseases with \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars.\u201d I think this one is supposed to kick off a trend of adaptations of books about recluses. Or maybe about the South. Or murders and trials. Judging by this movie\u2019s unimpressive critical reception and third-place box office finish in its opening weekend, I highly doubt that it\u2019s going to be the start of any such movement.<\/p>\n\n\n

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            The movie opens with the discovery of a dead body in rural North Carolina \u2013 that of local (figurative) ladykiller Chase (Harris Dickenson). The police are baffled as to how he wound up dead, but suspect foul play, specifically by ex-girlfriend Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones). They come to Kya\u2019s marshland shack to question her, and she flees, making her look even more suspicious. Kya is arrested and defended in court by angelic lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn, his Atticus-Finch-O-Meter turned up to 10). Milton makes mincemeat out of the incompetent prosecution\u2019s case, but there\u2019s still the matter of getting the jury on Kya\u2019s side. Kya is something of a pariah in the community for her poverty and reclusiveness, and the jury is bound to be prejudiced against her. Frankly I found it a stretch that the pretty white woman was in too much danger from prejudice, but the movie insists that the town is ready to execute her because she lives off the beaten path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We follow Kya\u2019s tragic life story through extensive flashbacks. Her abusive, alcoholic father (Garrett Dillahunt) drove away the rest of her family until one day he too disappeared. She had to learn to fend for herself from an early age, as she wasn\u2019t welcome at the local school and didn\u2019t want to live in a group home. But there were a few well-wishers like Milton, the couple that ran the general store (Sterling Mercer Jr. and Michael Hyatt), and the studious Tate (Taylor John Smith). Kya and Tate enter into a relationship, but he breaks her heart. As a rebound, she begins seeing eventual corpse Chase, who starts off pushy and mildly unlikeable and eventually becomes dangerous and deserving of his fate. These scenes are intercut with the trial, where it\u2019s a wonder the jury doesn\u2019t sympathize with Kya from day one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            At the center of the film is Daisy Edgar-Jones\u2019 star-making performance, and it\u2019s a good one. I can\u2019t say the movie does a great job of making her look like someone that has been beaten down by elements her whole life (similar to how I thought Ansel Elgort was too good-looking for his role in \u201cWest Side Story\u201d), but everything she contributes to the performance, she nails. This movie isn\u2019t quite good enough to shoot her to the top of Hollywood right away, but it\u2019ll be enough to get her more leading roles that will get her to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Despite the strengths of Edgar-Jones, \u201cWhere the Crawdads Sing\u201d is otherwise a mess. The balance of flashbacks and trial scenes is all out of whack, it\u2019s hard to tell how much time is passing between flashbacks, and the whole thing is just too sappy for its own good, save for some horrific scenes of abuse. I\u2019m not particularly happy that I had to see this movie, and I\u2019m certainly not eager to see more like it. Going by its box office performance, neither is anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere the Crawdads Sing\u201d is rated PG-13 for sexual content and violence including a sexual assault. Its running time is 125 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             \u201cWhere the Crawdads Sing\u201d is being pushed as one of those literary adaptations that kicks off a whole litany of adaptations. We had magic and fantasy… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":54050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1447],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54051,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54049\/revisions\/54051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}