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| Review by Dana Abercrombie |
Everything seems simple enough, young man starting life, possibly hesitant and fearful, but Bryan Reisberg’s little indie is much more than what meets the surface.
Craig played by Harry Lloyd is at his core a scared little boy, hiding from his impending responsibilities as a young father, buying and moving into a house in San Francisco with his girlfriend Allison (Elizabeth Gray). His actions appear selfish and downright unappealing but sometimes people just need to be by themselves when facing a life change.
The plot is barebones at best and the writing is simple. If you’re looking for mind-blowing performances, a unique cast of characters and great set pieces this movie is not for you. The story is slow; nothing happens and at times it loses its way.
As the movie falls apart, Craig is clearly lost trying so to fit in with the random people he meets along the way.
From the very beginning he’s is having an identity crisis, lingering behind anyone he talks to in hopes of making a lasting connection. He’s a people-pleaser, almost in a creepy way, but this is juxtapositioned against how he treats his girlfriend; the lying, the short answers. This identity crisis makes it hard to truly understand the character and whether he’s likeable. He purchases alcohol for minors in hopes of conversation, yet he refuses to communicate with his girlfriend who is forced to believe his lies. As a result it’s a struggle to feel sympathetic towards him and makes the audience question “who is the real Craig?”
Unfortunately the script is not very strong, there are no stand-out performance and at times it tries too hard to be what it’s not: introspective and deep.
The movie is filled with a lot of silence and empty stares that would make Bella Swan proud. The audience is forced to come to their own conclusions about what awaits Craig when he returns home and what’s going on in his head. While open-ended movies can work wonderfully (Inception, for example), Big Significant Things never engages its audience, takes any chances to fully commit to anything, much like Craig’s life. This at times can be frustrating and scenes of pure silence which seem to drag on forever doesn’t really help.
Despite the many opportunities presented the movie is simply a test in patience with no payoff, which is disappointing since it could have a lot to say about how we psychologically view and handle life’s many curves; but just like Craig, maybe its screenwriter was too afraid to do so.
So many opportunities are wasted; even the rich landscape of the South is replaced with dead dry environments, making the audience feel even more isolated and unpleasant. There are so many things this movie could have been; sadly it doesn’t have much to say about anything. It never captures the audience, making them care about Craig let alone any of the characters.
The message of the movie is that sometimes there are no answers, but Big Significant Things wastes time never getting to that point.
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