By Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor
Wristcutters: A Love Story (4 stars)
Wristcutters: A Love Story has a dark, twisted humor most moviegoers will not understand.
The film teems with suicide, but the movie neither romanticizes nor dispirits suicide.
After Zia (Patrick Fugit) ends it all, he is sent to a bizarre afterlife slated for suicides.
Everything is about the same as when he was alive, except nobody smiles and there is a weird blue cast blanketing the scenery.
Months later, he finds out his girlfriend, Desiree (Leslie Bibb), has offed herself. He drags along his new Russian friend Eugene (Shea Whitman) across the country in search of her.
On their trip, they pick up a hitchhiker, Mikal (Shannon Sossamon), who believes she is here by mistake and is looking for the people in charge.
Wristcutters: A Love Story is not really about suicide, the film has more to do with the latter part of its title.
The film is mainly a buddy road trip movie. It skirts around why individuals have killed themselves and focuses more on the how.
The film has a good premise, but the final product has a few weak points.
The acting works 87 percent of the time, but for a few scenes, the dialogue seems forced and uninspired—like actors forgot their lines and are vamping til they remember them.
Also one of the weird quirks of the films doesn’t really click with the rest of the peculiar afterlife.
A pseudo black hole is underneath the passenger seat of Eugene’s car. Anything that falls into it—tapes, sunglasses, spray painted weeds—disappears.
The warp tunnel thing seems like a cop-out for an event, which makes the sweet ending, loses some steam.
The other problem is the length of the movie. It clocks in under 90 minutes, which leaves the viewers wanting more.
With that said, Wristcutters has a wonderfully twisted humor and uses deadpan beautifully.
Wristcutters: A Love Story has heart even with its flaws.
