Other People’s Children, starring Diane Marshall-Green and Chad Michael Murray, is a film about a filmmaker who spirals downhill after the loss of her famous father. The film has opened up in New York on Jan.1 and opens on VOD and various digital platforms on Jan. 5. Here’s my review of the film…
The film is directed by Liz Hinlein, who in her directorial debut, makes a film that didn’t quite hit the mark when it comes to an “artsy” film but you can see that Hinlein is on the right track towards that route.
What’s tricky about a film like this is that while the main character, Samantha Trassler (Diane Marshall-Green) is a filmmaker herself, it becomes a film about a film. Samantha losses her father who happens to be a famous painter and as she tries to cope with the loss, she attempts to make a documentary centered around a homeless man (Chad Michael Murray). During the process of mourning and creativity, her life begins to go into all sorts of precarious directions.
The story itself wasn’t terrible, though it seemed like it tried to be too provocative a lot of the time but that wasn’t the biggest problem I had with the film. In this film, there are a lot of “hispters” and gypsy-type of personalities and the biggest problem I had with this film, are those characters. They really didn’t seem convincing enough and almost seemed like stereotypical parodies as if I was watching an episode of Portlandia, just without the humor.
Though the execution of the film wasn’t spot on but it was an okay film. With the type of story this had, it felt like it was best fit for a TV drama series.
I give Other People’s Children 5 fridges out of 10.