Carnage

On paper I think "Carnage," taken from Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage," sounds pretty interesting: a real-time, devolving argument between two couples who fight each other verbally rather than physically and who begin to see how really screwed up their marriages are. However, Roman Polanski follows up his excellent "The Ghost Writer" with one of the thinnest and least necessary motion pictures of the year. Superficial, monotonous, and strung together, "Carnage" is a tired, flat film almost entirely limited to an apartment that's supposed to be in New York (though with Polanski's house arrest, it wasn't shot there). As a result of that, it's pretty thematically limited as well, and the only kicks one can expect to get out of this come via the occasionally funny script.

Zachary whacks Ethan in the face with a stick in a park, and the parents want to sort things out. Ethan's, Penelope and Michael (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly), invite Zachary's, Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), over to settle matters and what seems to be a simple chat to set up positive interaction between the boys turns into much more as the guests stay to eat apparently horrific cobbler, drink coffee, spew bile, drink, and, to the annoyance of everybody, answer countless phone calls.

Sure, some of the satire works at times, and the performances are decent, but it's not really worth it. Whit Stillman does this sort of thing better. "Carnage" is certainly not worth spending a bunch of money on, especially if you're someone who doesn't see a ton of movies. C