The Tenants (2006)

Touches You

Good movie but grossly overrated

Best movie ever!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a movie I nominate as one of the worst movies of all time (and I even liked Ishtar). I've usually liked McDermott's work in the past and I'm a big snoop fan but I was shocked at how woodenly everyone in this movie delivered their lines. If I closed my eyes I could easily have been convinced I was hearing a preproduction meeting where everyone sat around and read the script out loud, having never seen it before. I can only assume that the director, in his directing debut, (after many, many, assistant second director jobs) had a bit too much of the chronic. The camera work is boring, plodding and depressing to watch. I can not believe that anyone involved in this movie allowed it to be put out without getting their names removed from the credits.The only good thing about this movie is that if I have friends over to watch movies and I get tired, I pop this in the DVD player and in a matter of minutes everyone decides it's time to go....

As a man who enjoys the raw power and honesty of a Snoop Dogg performance, this movie was perfect for me. My friends and I rented the movie solely because Snoop Dogg was on the cover, and Snoop did not disappoint. The movie is filled with Snoop intensive scenes where he is afforded the opportunity to display his dominant personality. Despite Snoop Dogg's immaculate performance, other actors within the movie, as well as the story itself contained some unattractive qualities. Regarding the lead actor, Dylan McDermott's portrayal of Harry Lesser was too dramatic and unrealistic. I cannot find that kind of depression and seriousness in my real life experiences. The depressive nature of his character may in fact be the fault of the author and not the actor. At many times, the characters of The Tenants would act irrationally and contrary to real life behavior. Overall, the story and the actions taken by the characters were not as believable as I would have liked them to be. Nevertheless, I have yet to see a bad Snoop Dogg performance in any of his films. I stand by my initial instincts to rent the movie because he was on the cover.

Watching The Tenants has been a interesting experience for me. It is the first film I have ever seen where I have shuttled at speed through parts of the (non)action - and I can normally watch anything from turgid action movies to Serbo-Croat indie and find them fascinating.The Tenants is frustratingly sluggish and over-orchestrated. One of the main problems of the script is there is little realistic character dialogue, apart from the set pieces where characters 'collide' in a very structured setting (to make this work, the film needed to feel more conceptual, which it didn't). This leads to a lack of realistic character development; everyone seems two-dimensional.The worse for this is the character of Bill Spear, aka Snoop Dogg. I found his characterization very uncomfortable and very unsympathetic. At one point, I even stopped the film because I got so annoyed by the character's aggressive, violent and monotonal delivery, the lack of any other personality layer apart from that of the reactionary "on" switch (which gets really predictable after a while) and I so desperately wanted him to have some redeeming qualities. However, one reason for this jar might be the nebulous time scape of the film (supposedly 70s, it feels and looks more early noughties). If it had been more securely fixed in the 70s, his character might have seemed more understandable.The lighting of the film was also awkward. All the way through, the soundtrack attempts to provide a certain gritty, jazz-infused atmosphere that just did not come off, largely because the set was too well-lit.The Tenants, to me, is an unbelievable film. It doesn't depict real people or propose any interesting ways of thinking about race, identity or the life of a writer, be they white or black.Strangely, I came away with the feeling that this project needed David Lynch; his eerie, clastrophobic and obsessive look and feel would have lifted both the actors and the script into something quite remarkable.

Tenants Two writers struggle to complete their books in an all but empty apartment house. They at first help each other and then slowly the tension between them begins to build.This is based upon a Bernard Malamud novel and unfortunately everyone speaks as though they are in that novel. Very little of the dialog is natural, its purple and brimming with shades of meaning. Its as if a college English major with a head full of pretensions wrote the script. It's awful and I found myself instantly immune to anything the film had to say, which is a shame since the film is populated with great performances from top to bottom. Snoop Dog on down are fine form, unfortunately none of them can over come the falseness of the words and the premise.I can't really recommend this movie. While not really bad, its very preachy and pretentious to the point of making you want to walk away. I lost interest less then a third of the way in and had to struggle to get to the end. If you're interested I'd try it on cable, but I wouldn't lay out good money to see it.