Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Excellent, a Must See

The pieces of this movie are much better than its entirety. Featuring some really fine musical performances, it is also at times cloyingly unwatchable. Its attempt to be "fair and balanced" is about as fair and balanced and believable as Fox cable news; it pokes witty and intelligent fun at strident liberals, while taking cursory potshots at greedy bankers who foreclose on cute visionary land developers.fr Noah Wyle is so cute as the steamroller of California's last few inches of free livable terrain that zealous liberal women of all ages melt before his dreamy gaze. All except his miserable, jealous, possibly lesbian, twin sister. "You're so hot!" exclaims Cloris Leachman's upper crust earth mama. Looking like Tucker Carlson sans bow-tie, Wyle seduces beautiful young Kate Mara by taking her to his hideous McMansion dream home. Despite the fact that she was raised by hippies and spent her entire life loving nature and fighting to preserve it, one glance at the ersatz Roman columns and faux marble fountain in the living room is enough to convert her to an appreciation of his architectural "artistry."Immediately after insulting her by telling her that she's a packaged commodity being exploited by all of her p.c. friends and family, he wins her back by adding that he loves her packaging. And what's inside. Awww. How can any woman resist such heady charm? And that twinkle in his eyes?But it's easy to see how a beautiful talented young hippie chick could turn to putty in Wyle's hands. Apparently there are no cute boys in Northern California who share her political views, or appreciate her fashion model good looks, her passion or her genuinely lovely singing voice. Mara plays a beautiful and glamorous hippie singer raised on protest songs, playing in a folk group with her family. In one unlikely moment, dad Keith Carradine, who is perhaps the most interesting of all the stereotyped characters in this movie, shows an ugly side as he chides his daughter for greedily wanting to go out on her own. Revealing his own inner greed. Another evil hypocritical hippie exposed.To be honest, Wyle undergoes a dramatic character change of his own. Losing his Brooks Brothers sports coat for a more organic L.L. Bean ensemble of layered denim and cotton. Which totally sums up his depth of character. At the big climactic concert, Mara hesitates before going onstage, pining for vapid, avaricious, pretty boy Wyle (who has overshot his financial dreams and wound up screwed by the evil banks who've foreclosed on his dream project) and doubting the motives of everyone she ever trusted in her life, from birth. Finally she comes out onstage, quieting the frenzied fans lusting for her politically correct folk tunes. Instead, she announces her love for a developer, which upsets them even more, into a booing hissing near riot.Luckily, she soothes their primitive savage breasts by singing her latest song, a brain-dead ditty about getting a tan and walking hand in hand with her man on the beach. Prompting a chorus of oohs and aahs and a vigorous ovation.Having thus seduced them into bliss, she exits with her man, while the shrewish liberal harpy who'd exploited her worst of all now finds her own happy ending onstage, crowing out a song which succinctly condemns every facet of humanity without discretion, or any sense at all.

I live in Marin County where this flick was filmed and was an extra in it. I remember watching Jonathan Parker direct his actors and thinking, "This is gonna look better in the finished product. It HAS to." Because what I was seeing looked laughably amateurish. If not for the presence of name actors like Noah Wylie and Illiana Douglas, I would have assumed I was watching the production of a student film.Well, when this baby finally hit screens at the Mill Valley Film Festival, I was surprised to find my suspicions had been correct: no amount of editing or re-packaging was gonna polish this turd.What's too bad about all this is that, at its core, the movie had some good ideas. The ongoing battle between slick, greedy developers and aging, environmentalist hippie boomers is a very real one here in the Bay Area, and there's ample hypocrisy and fodder for satire on both sides.But Parker gets lost in a sea of tired clichés and labored, talky dialog and in the end can't decide what kind of movie he wants to make. Is it a satire of the tug-of-war between progress and preservation and the colorful players involved? Or is it a sappy, love-triangle romance? Or how about the tale of a short-sighted man's redemption by way of a flighty young songbird? The Californians tries to be all these things (and more) and ends up being nothing more than a muddled, uneven mess.

This is a film that fails greatness by a stretch, but is still better than most of the trite by-the-numbers crud churned out by Hollywood for the Spike TV crowd these days. "The Californians" features a few genuinely funny moments and some quietly competent acting by a fine cast. Just when you think you have it pegged as an "ecofreak" movie or a satire on hippy-dippy California culture or a send-up of greedy and insatiable developers, it makes a sharp turn into something else. I have a sneaking sympathy for films that violate expectations and refuse to be pinned down. No easy answers; no car chases; no Star Turns -- can you deal with it?

Great cast and a potentially good story, but it just didn't happen. I found it to be boring and without a decent plot to make one interested in the movie. With only a few comedic moments and some good music/vocal moments.... it was not enough to make this a movie worth watching. I'm glad I caught it on cable (Showtime) and didn't waste my money in the San Francisco area to see it. I doubt it will see a premiere anywhere but in California. The movie starts out as a message about destroying/preserving the beautiful land that the money hungry developers want to consume, but then transcends into a romance between the two fractions of indifference. The movie offers nothing other than a waste of time.