Barefoot (2014) Directed by Andrew Fleming

This movie features an incredibility stupid and unconvincing main premise and the movie therefore also works out as a very stupid and highly unconvincing one!

Some movies are just so bad and stupid, that they actually become insulting to watch. insulting to the viewers' intelligence, as well as insulting to people with real psychological problems.

So here we have a movie in which a man brings a psychiatric patient along with him as a date, to meet his family, at his brother's wedding. What can go wrong right? Sounds like a brilliant plan! And it's not like she ever, at any point, behaved normally. It gets established very early on already how incredibly insane and socially inadequate and awkward the Evan Rachel Wood character is.

The problem with all of this is that the movie wants you to think that she's just very naive and it wants you to go; 'Awwww, that's so cute! She doesn't know how a toilet works and she doesn't know how to behave at a diner table.' No! Nothing cute about any of it and she isn't naive, she's just plain crazy and needs some serious and professional help.

It makes the 'twist' all the more weird really. Let me just spoil it for you, since there is absolutely no reason why you should ever watch this movie anyway. About halfway through we learn that she isn't insane after all and we are actually supposed to believe this. Then how about all of the insane stuff she did and said in the first half of the movie? None of it seems to matter and everything seems forgotten by the movie. It asks us to go along with things we, as the viewers, just can't go along with, due to all of the things it showed and told us earlier on in the movie about the character.

It also truly doesn't make the love-story a very convincing and believable one. Why on Earth would the Scott Speedman character ever fall for a psychiatric patient, who isn't just obviously out of her mind but also does nothing but getting him constantly in trouble, over and over again, with just about everybody. How are we supposed to believe that they are going to live happily ever after, once the end credits start to roll?

It's really insulting and annoying to see how the movie obviously isn't taking its audience very seriously. It's like watching "Patch Adams" all over again. It of course got made with the best of intentions but it asks us to get behind characters and agree to situations and decisions that are impossible to get behind, due to its nature. It also seems to believe that being crazy and over-the-top equals fun and cute. It really doesn't always work out that easy, as this movie also clearly shows.

It's not like I entirely hated watching this movie, I mean, it's still better looking and acted than most other similar genre movies but it's screenplay is so incredibly stupid, insulting and unconvincing that the movie just never works out as a good, cute and quirky one, despite the movie its hard efforts and best of intentions.

4/10

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