At this point, a movie with frequent co-stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper seems like an almost unavoidable hit. (Admit it, you’re already excited for David O. Russel’s Joy, and there’s not even a trailer yet.) Team the pair with another Oscar-winning director and a story based on a beloved best-selling novel, and you’ve certainly got gold. But while Serena has all those things, it’s ended up being hailed as a direct-to-VOD disaster.
In 2012, between their Oscar-worthy turns in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, Lawrence and Cooper teamed with Oscar-winning director Susanne Bier (In a Better World) to adapt Ron Rash’s 2008 novel Serena. The story follows a Depression-era timber baron (Cooper) with grand ambition as he ferociously fights his way to power while dealing with a troubled marriage to the sure-headed title character (Lawrence). Those sensing overtones of There Will Be Blood are not far off.
Apparently under pressure to match Silver Linings‘ unexpected success, Bier became over-precious with editing the film, taking 18 months to complete a cut. It finally premiered at a London film festival in 2014, subsequently bombing upon its UK release. Back in America, the film struggled to find a distributor, with Bier putting together three separate cuts for buyers to choose from and still no one wanted the film. Again: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Susanne Bier, no buyers.
Eventually, Magnolia, the sister company to the film’s production company 2929 Productions, stepped in to distribute in the US. But with absolutely no fanfare, the film was slipped onto On-demand services and iTunes on February 26th. Sure, there’s a March 27th limited theatrical run planned, but if your movie goes VOD and you don’t even tell anyone, signs aren’t exactly pointing up.
So why does Serena, despite all of its sure-fire success built in, apparently fail so hard? One potential buyer backed away because the film simply “made no sense.” In fact, many are pointing to Bier’s absence of feeling for the setting, pacing, or tone of the story as one of the reasons it works so miserably unwell. Apparently, the acting isn’t the issue (Rhys Ifans also shows up as an almost-engaging killer), but it’s a little bit of everything else that drags the film down.
Having never seen the movie ourselves, it’s probably best to let Vulture’s Adam Sternbergh explain it:
AdvertisementIt’s an incompetent movie. Unlike more famous movie disasters, it plays out not like the product of one unchecked monstrous ego but of a thousand tiny decisions gone wrong. The editing is incompetent. The pacing is incompetent. The scenes don’t logically flow from one to the next. The soundtrack sounds like it was generated by a computer-soundtrack algorithm set to ‘mournful fiddle.'”
It just goes to show you that even when so many big pieces are so right, if the flat-edged pieces don’t come together just so, the whole puzzle falls apart. Watch a trailer — which actually belies all of this — below.
