The Constant Gardner

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Summary:
A British diplomat's wife is murdered, and the constantly gardening husband goes in search for clues leading to her death.

Review:
From the director of the solid first effort City of God comes a preachy, boring, uninspirational story about evil drug companies and the atrocities that we should all worry about in Africa. Everyone knows that this shit goes on in Africa, and it is a terrible thing. We're reminded at least three times about "the way things are," about the (what the storytellers want you to consider) twisted morality of those who so heartlessly do drug testing on the poor villagers in Africa, which are the typical big-time questions: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Why save this one life, when there are many thousands others like this? That's the way of the world, yadda yadda yadda...
I don't mind these themes in a movie as long as it's done in a heartfelt and not-so-manipulative manner. That's my big compaint with The Constant Gardner. I was going along fine for most of my viewing time, but the end was so retarded that it quashed all hopes of emotional integrity. We get slow motion clips of young children running, laughing, playing, and we are to assume that all these kids are dead. Sadly, I had no connection to any of these people, and so all it did was make me want to laugh, because making poor kids run in slow motion (with smiles on their faces) at the end of a movie is a cheap, cheap way to try to tug at the viewers' heartstrings. I would expect more from such a highly acclaimed director as Meirelles. Shame on me, I guess.
The storyline itself is fairly basic, and I guess I ruined some of the mystery of the first hour and twenty minutes for you by giving the premise of the mystery away. I knew nothing about this movie going into it, and 50 minutes from the start time, I finally started to feel that there was some kind of POINT to the story. At first, I was alright with the dreadfully slow pace, and the lack of any plot development. Tessa is Justin's wife, OK I get that. She's dead in the opening scene, and then there are tons of flashbacks that show us what kind of person she is and how they met. Alright, I'm with you so far. But then an hour went by, and my ass started to get fatigued. Thankfully, an HOUR INTO THE MOVIE, most of the shit that happens is in the present, and Feinnes gets most of the screentime as he goes from place to place trying to pick up the missing pieces of what his wife failed to tell him she was doing. I won't give away much more about the last half of the movie, because anything that might be interesting to tell about would ruin the chance of entertainment you might find from it.

All I can safely say is that Feinnes and Weisz did a decent job, and it isn't a terribly overdramatic movie. The problem is that it's way too long, boring as all get-out, nothing that we haven't seen before, with very little mystery in a movie that tries to convey the idea of having a lot of mystery behind it. Seriuosly, this movie lacks much depth at all. I'm not a fan of Africa as it is, and we get inundated with so much of the sad life of living in Africa that I'm pretty callous to it all anymore. This movie didn't change my view on things in any way, shape or form.
I don't recommend this movie. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get.

GRADE:  D+

Reviewed:  9/2/05