Keywords: arizona, dark comedy, mistaken identity, suburbia, murder mystery,
5.9/10
51% – Critics
72% – Audience
Maggie Moore(s) Storyline
Police Chief Sanders (Jon Hamm) investigates the bizarre murders of two women with the same name and unravels a web of small-town lies. He meets and quickly falls for Rita (Tina Fey), a nosy neighbor who is eager to help solve the mystery.
Maybe if instead of using a Will Forte lookalike they had gotten Will Forte this wouldve been funnier?….Jon Hamm seems wildly out of place, along with most of the cast. Also the script is just not well written. How Did they get all these normally good actors to sign onto it? Now that’s a mystery we would all like to solve because there is just no desire to solve this one. This is as if two separate films were made by different crews with significantly different ideas. This is very disjointed in its portrayal. People do not act as stupidly and flagrantly moronic, especially in public places, as these people are portrayed. They don’t walk up to people unsolicited and start talking about their crimes. The money spent and talent involved produced this? How?
Reviewed by janet-42-1674724 / 10
Fargo with mismatched cast and poor dialog
1/2 way though this film I kept on wondering if I had seen it before. Unnecessary murders, Humanized chief of police, small town vistas, etc. Fargo without the snow. I also noticed that the characters seemed to be struggling to get away from the writers. They were dogged down with speech and actions that made no sense. Everyone seemed to be miscast. I love Tina Fey, don’t get me wrong, but she was one of those actors who were underutilized and poorly formed. Jon Hamm was wooden, but when isn’t he? I actually started to watch this because it was a chance to see Nick Mohammed In something other than Ted Lasso. Again, disappointing.
I don’t really care that this was a ripoff of Fargo, so much as it shoulda/coulda been a good ripoff. The elements were there, but only the killer was fresh (I won’t spoil the plot, but he was pretty good at being evil).
Throughout the movie, people kept on doing things that didn’t make sense. In one of the scenes, where Tina Fey’s character gets a hotel room was like a really nice song playing on a record player and suddenly someone sends the tonearm scratching across the entire record – jarring and nonsensical.
Jon Hamm’s character is grieving, but there is no substance to the grieving.
And finally, the multiple victims in the story. No development. I would accuse the screenwriter of misogany with the first 2 murders, but he makes up for it with the last three. However, at least the last 3 got a chance for us to begin to see who they were. The women at the beginning had no chance at all – just victims.
I will give the writer and filmmaker some credit, however for not dumbing down the audience. When tina’s character, towards the end of the movie makes her fateful decision, you know from her encounter with the car repair man what drove (pun intended) her to her decision.
I will give the set locations person and cinematographer a positive review – sets were gorgeous and real, and the cinematography helped to answer a few questions and move the plot along.
All in all, this should have been a much better movie and was destroyed by bad writing, bad character development. And poor casting.
I gave it 4 stars because i was willing to watch it to the end, and those of you who have not seen Fargo will enjoy it more than I did.
very funny with a touch of drama and gore
Open minded, with little expectations I watched this movie which grew om me by the minute into an intriguing very funny story with unbelievable but maybe therefore credible twists, clever dialogues, which made me laugh out loud and left me with a grin on my face throughout the entire movie. All characters are in search of a form of connection, they all hunger for love. My only problem is the length of the movie, I would have rather seen it in the form of a series, with a bit more attention to the separate stories. Now it’s a too condensed story but still a little gem that deserves a lot of views.
