Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Wonderful Movie

Redundant and unnecessary.

Admirable film.

What a waste of 2 hours. Don't know how this is rated so high.

With an impressive talent pool of female performers like veterans Meg Ryan, JoBeth Williams and Olympia Dukakis and a younger talented performer like Kristen Stewart, this is the land of women anyone can warm up to. Sadly, "In the Land of Women" director/writer Jon Kasdan's honest approach about a struggling writer who departs Los Angeles to tend to his ailing grandmother in Michigan, fails to give his cast, led by the underrated Adam Brody from "The O.C." a chance fully envelop their acting chops.The movie commences as soft-core porn movie writer Carter Webb (Brody) is in the process of getting dumped by his model/girlfriend Sofia (Elena Anaya). Carter is a harried writer parts ways to suburban Michigan to spend time with his grandmother (Dukakis in role that doesn't have much to challenge her) while it gives the much needed time to work on that novel, he so wishes to finish. Fortuitously, across the street from his grandmother's house live the Hardwicke family who are the need for some well-needed healing for an aspiring writer like himself. We have the mother Sarah (Meg Ryan who got lost in the shuffle since 1997) is suffering from breast cancer. She is joined by her disconnected daughter, Lucy (Stewart looking abnormally slender) who's in a crossroad situation of whether or not she should kiss school jock Gabe (Graham Wardle) or the more meek and humble Eric (Dustin Milligan). And then there's the younger daughter Paige (Mackenzie Vega) who is just another fine line of the typical Hollywood castings to play the smarter beyond their age preteen kids.I'll give kudos to Brody for keeping Carter for playing a solid role as a preoccupied individual, but his part as a protagonist really lacks anything you can feel emphatic about. Ever since the opening scene with the break-up we never see any kind of emotion from Brody except for looking miserable. Maybe Sofia was in the right for dumping this sour puss to begin with. And like Stewart, Brody looks like he's also quite gaunt. Meg Ryan as Sarah shows she's not a has-been as she puts on a wonderful performance as Sarah. However, we don't get to see her that much which makes her role inferior to her glory days making romantic comedies with the likes of Billy Crystal and Tom Hanks. As for Stewart playing role more customized for Evan Rachel Wood, she still stands out as a spoiled teen who also seems to have aspirations for painting. We watch as she slaps those brushes like Jackson Pollack on a canvas and after a quick montage, she created a provocative masterpiece. But her problems still aren't as problematic as the movie makes it out to be.Kasdan from his "Freaks and Geeks" days has no problems when it comes to creating eccentric and quirky characters. But "In The Land of Women" why are all the high school characters feel very superficial? He has tremendous story lines to carry with him, the breast cancer, the affair, the break-up, but then the film teeters off to the more mundane "After School Special" teen dramas (the house party scene was painful to endure). Plus the relationships look to poorly structured it's awkward to even think about. Sarah is too old to be with Carter, plus she's still married while Carter is much older than Lucy to be in any kind of serious relationship. But I'm relieved there was nothing serious about their relationship except for the angst-relieving kiss scene. But why did it taker place on the lawn. Couldn't they do it in a bedroom?Learning a bit from his father Lawrence's legacy, Jon does give his film the right tone, but it's still inferior to the senior Kasdan's "Big Chill". Jon takes great conceit into this film making it lacking in terms of emotion. In spite of the contrivances this movie possesses, there is still a vast amount of sincerity and insightful moments in this movie. But in the end very little amounts to the characters making this film alone feel at times very empty. Kasdan is a very capable director and a writer and I hope in 2018 with a new Han Solo project coming out, we will see where his career will take off after that.

Wow, what a nice little flick! Carter Webb is an unique character that oscillates between being the good boy and the womanizer; either way, he's likable in both situations, and male spectator will surely feel identified with him, one time or another. He deals with different kind of females. An hypochondriac grandmother, an immature teenager and a problematic woman. The grandma is indeed funny, and I loudly laughed in the "I hadn't eaten anything in three weeks" scene; it exposed with sincerity how old people act when they feel lonely and helpless. Even if the portrayal of such character can have a serious connotation, I couldn't help laughing at her manners. The directing and editing are sometimes weird, and I noticed an overuse of editing during conversations, but that doesn't spoil the (many) qualities of the film. The story, for example, is EXTREMELY original, and so are the conversations and the problems that characters deal with. Adam Brody has an amazing performance, and I'm really surprised that I haven't ever seen him before. In some scenes he remembered me of Axl from "The Middle". "In the Land of Women" is, without a doubt, a different movie from anything you've seen, and proves that a low-budget project can be as satisfying (or more) as a Hollywood blockbuster. Give it a try!

This movie is one of the most underrated films if IMDb's got to give it a 6.6. They obviously read the misleading synopsis and saw the misleading poster, expected some amount of explicitness and got disappointed. This film is more than about getting over somebody. It's about how you should treat people, how people should treat you. Carter, the lead character moves in with his grandmother. Being a writer he has a thirst for new stories and characters with depth. He perceives things differently from others and doesn't care to express his opinion if asked for one. The film has such subtle beauty in it, and such full characters that you actually live as someone else for a while. I aspire to make a film like this one someday. Hats off to Jon Kasdan for writing such lovely people. I'd give it a 9/10.