It Happened in L.A. (2017) Reviews

• Amateurish, but amusing

  name99-92-5453892018-07-13

  OK, the elephant in the room is that this is a totally amateurish movie. It looks great (wonderful what you can do with even the cheapest digital cameras and editing equipment these days) but the dialog is frequently written stilted and delivered stilted. And I think the subtitle were generated by a (not very well-trained) AI --- they sound vaguely correct, but clearly miss the point, and to make it wore the characters to whom dialog is ascribed are frequently incorrect. But against that, our lead actress is indeed lovely, the movie is amusing (though I wouldn't call it very, let alone laugh-out-loud funny), and (my usual movie concern) the characters were not one-dimensional cliches. It wasn't obvious from the moment you met each one who they would behave, and the movie avoided all the tiresome idiocy you see in so many movies where it's felt that various characters have to be converted to some "better way of life". For example our lead character is a judgemental ,slightly selfish, snob at the beginning of the movie, and no different by the end; even so she's accepted back by (and accepts) her nebbish boyfriend (who's had a few non-nebbish experiences along the way, but not been much changed by them). Not only is this, I think, truer to real life, it's also more interesting to watch. Likewise, even though some of the movie's characters are in the business, and this is even mildly relevant to some of the plot, we don't have the curse of such movies (the self-congratulation, or mental masturbation, or making excuse for bad behavior) that are common to so many self-referential movies. The characters in the business have jobs that they try to do well, but they're neither obsessed by nor destroyed by these jobs. Well done for more realism!

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• Plenty of laughs in this Hollywood satire

  paulbrightguy2017-01-26

  LA TIMES is a very funny millennial movie about dating and marriage in the city of bright lights by writer/director/lead actor Michelle Morgan. She and her talented ensemble punch up a modern comedy with laugh-out-loud dialogue and situations while satirizing the facetiousness of Hollywood. A number of jokes about the entertainment industry kept the indie film guys in the row behind me at Sundance laughing throughout the movie. Lots of sexual situations and pot smoking so probably not a great movie for religious fundamentalists. Fortunately, none present in the audience to spoil the fun. A social comedy that examines the need for meaningful partnership in a world of fuzzy morality and superficial values. Good fun.

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