Actor Matthew McConaughey’s latest movie, “The Sea Of Trees,” is absolutely atrocious, according to virtually all the movie critics who have reviewed it.
The $25 million flick revolves around a sad professor named Arthur Brennan — played by Matthew McConaughey — who journeys from New England to a forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan just to kill himself. In the forest, called the “Suicide Forest” because so many people off themselves there, McConaughey’s character meets a magical Japanese guy who appears to have slashed his own wrists. Together, they “embark on a spiritual, life-changing journey of friendship, discovery, and healing.”
It’s as awful as it sounds, America’s movie reviewers say — only more so.
YouTube screenshot/Movieclips trailers
“The Sea of Trees” receives “freshness rating” of just 8 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, the gold standard of review aggregator sites.
It has made $2,894 in revenue thus far in theaters, according to Box Office Mojo. So the producers need $24,997,106 to recoup their investment.
The movie features “soliloquies that sound suspiciously like outtakes from McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials,” according to the A.V. Club. “Nothing damns the film more than the fact that it’s dull.”
The New York Post pans “The Sea of Trees” as “a soggy mess of a movie” and “a bad soap opera” — with “a vague, syrupy soundtrack” to boot.
Variety suggests that the “risibly long-winded drama” is “almost impressive in the way it shifts from dreary two-hander to so-so survival thriller to terminal-illness weepie to M. Night Shyamalan/Nicholas Sparks-level spiritual hokum.” There’s “flashback after torturous flashback.”
The Hollywood Report describes “The Sea of Trees” as “sincere to the point of utter banality” and full of “inescapably indulgent acting.”
“The Sea Of Trees,” directed by Gus Van Sant, opened in select theaters a week ago. It was shelved for quite a while after getting booed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015.
This fall, the University of Texas at Austin announced, McConaughey will return to the school — his alma mater — to co-teach an upper-level course in filmmaking — and to find that, while he keeps getting older, man, college girls stay the same age. (RELATED: Matthew McConaughey Will Teach Film Class At His College Alma Mater, Appear In The Flesh ONCE)
McConaughey will teach most of his portions of the course via video recording. However, at some point during the semester, there will be “one on-campus visit” by McConaughey himself.
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