31 Days of Film: Kodachrome

This last week of work has been crazy.  As I’m sure you could tell, we’re nine days in to 31 movies in 31 days and I’m about four movies behind the pace I was hoping to be.  And I was planning to use this weekend to catch up some of those movies.  I was going to drink some snobby scotch and watch a snobby movie.  But then a very pretty girl wanted to watch Kodachrome, and I don’t know a lot but I do know when a very pretty girl wants to watch a movie—you watch that movie.  Also, when Kodachrome was originally released on Netflix earlier in the year, I planned to watch it.  The trailer looked good and I like the cast a great deal.  Jason Sudeikis is of course known for his comedy but has proved in the past to be an excellent dramatic actor as well.  Elizabeth Olsen gave one of the most underrated performances last year in Wind River and Ed Harris, besides being trapped in the merry-go-round of mediocrity that is Westworld, has some incredible performances in his filmography.

All that being said, Kodachrome was a bit of a disappointment.  It is a pretty forgettable road trip movie stuffed with enough schmaltz and predictability to really let down its three main actors.  Ed Harris especially gives an exemplary performance as Ben Ryder, a famous photographer dying of liver cancer who takes his son, Matt Ryder (Sudeikis) and Zooey (Olsen), his nurse, on a cross country road trip to get his last rolls of Kodachrome film developed before the ink is no longer produced.  It’s a pretty good concept for a family drama film, which may explain why we’ve seen it a million times before, and many of those were better executions.

Conclusion:

The truth is Kodachrome doesn’t have much new to say and I don’t have much new to say about it.  If you have an hour and 45-minutes it’s not a terrible way to spend your time but there are better options out there.  If the film had made better use of its three leads’ excellent performances if could have been something truly special.