The Intervention (2016)

I wanted so badly to love this film for so many reasons, a couple of which are that it is Clea Duvall’s directorial feature debut and also that it stars Duvall, who I’m very fond of, as well as many other old favourites of mine, including Melanie Lynskey in a strange yet somehow still likeable enough role, Natasha Lyonne, Jason Ritter, Alia Shawkat, Ben Schwartz, Vincent Piazza and major crush since the days of How I Met Your Mother, Cobie Smulders. All performed admirably in the roles they were given.

The film’s setup, as well as the picturesque locale were, to me, reminiscent of 1983’s The Big Chill. Unfortunately, The Intervention lacked the depth of character and interesting interrelationships of The Big Chill. The characters here were somewhat one-dimensional. At an early stage of the film I noticed that I was having trouble pinpointing exactly how they all knew each other and what each character was about. The film, however, has many fine moments, the standout involving a particularly surprising game of charades, which was very cleverly approached by Duvall, yet she still somewhat fails to pull the whole film together completely.

Certain parts of the premise were a little tough to swallow and somewhat belonging to characters befitting today’s Y-Generation, where most of the characters involved here are clearly part of Generation X. The sense of entitlement, presumption and lack of inquiry into a marriage the group is trying to dissolve left me confused. Even when hints were dropped, which all present characters clearly noticed, that the couple in question had some remnant of their romantic flame still burning, the rest of the group (aside for one who did not want to get involved) were all still happy to go along with attempting to sever the marriage.

Luckily Duvall’s directing and the level of performance from everyone involved kept my interest intact. There were also a couple of twists and turns the film takes that are quite endearing and kept my interest, though some were not investigated deeply enough.

In short, this film could have been much better had the script and character development given more attention. Still, Duvall equates herself well as director and the film has more positives than negatives to it, so I’d be on the lookout to see what she comes up with next.

An above average film with a little extra something, yet still lacks in some departments. Check it out and decide for yourselves. 6.5/10.