Delayed Reaction: True Story

The Pitch: So, one day, Jonah Hill is like, "Hey, James Franco, we're the only two people tied to the Judd Apatow camp who have Oscar nominations, so, do you wanna, like, make a serious movie together?" And James Franco is like, "That might be a little confusing...but sure".

I remember a dream I had once. It was a great one, filled with all sorts of twists and turns. I remember it had something to do with Breaking Bad and an amusement park. I don't know why. For some reason though, there was a moment when I was going up the hill on a roller coaster, and everything about that dream was going to come together as soon as I got to the top of hill. Once I finally inched up to the very top (in a mine cart, naturally), I woke up. It was still the middle of the night and there were no outside forces to bring me out of my sleep. As far as I could tell, I woke up because my mind knew I had nowhere to go in the story and decided that waking up was better than facing that.

That's how I felt about True Story. It's like the screenwriter (who also directed, Rupert Gould) wrote the first 90% of the script thinking it was Primal Fear, then remembered that it's based on a true story and let everything fizzle in the last 10%.

Johan Hill and James Franco are solid here. That said, Hill's character manages to get lost in the movie even though he's the main character, and Franco's direction seems to have been "act like every sociopath you've ever seen on episodes of Law and Order". Felicity Jones is the only one who leaves unscathed. When she meets up with Franco at prison and delivers her speech to him, it's a reminder that even though Hill and Franco got their Oscar nominations first, she's the one who most deserves one already.

Mostly though, this is all tension with no release. Even something like Zodiac that didn't solve anything either at least used all the buildup for some thematic effect.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend