“Worst Family Ever!”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

August: Osage County - Movie PosterAUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is the film version of the award-winning play of the same awkward title, and it stars an impressive cast in a story about a family that is the very definition of “dysfunctional.”

The story supposedly takes place during the hot month of August on the desolate, dusty plains of Osage County, Oklahoma, and it stars Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, Dermot Mulroney, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The story is triggered by a crisis in the family, which causes the members of the family to gather around the home of the matriarch to offer their support.

The matriarch is Violet, who is addicted to pills, possibly brought on by the chemotherapy she underwent because of cancer.

Violet’s oldest daughter is Barbara, and she, her husband, and teenage daughter drive down from Denver, and Barbara tells Violet, “Maybe he needed some time away from you.”

A second daughter, Ivy, lives in the area, and a third daughter, Karen, shows up from Florida with her fiance in his flashy Ferrari sports car.

Then there is Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae, who lives nearby with her husband, Charles, as well as their adult son, Little Charles, who is insecure, awkward, and seems to be picked on all the time for no apparent reason.

Well, the family dinner is painful for the participants, but funny to the audience, and Violet wants to talk about subjects that no one else wants to talk about.

A doctor says that Violet suffers from mild cognitive impairment, and Barbara takes over and says she is running things now, dumping all of Violet’s pills down the toilet.

Needless to say, the family has many secrets that come out over the course of the events, some painful and some that weren’t secrets at all to a few members of the family.

Spoiler Alert!

If you have seen the play, you will recognize the original ending, but the movie keeps going on from there with an additional scene. Test audiences believed the original ending was too bleak, and so the producers ordered a new scene be tacked on to the end, but any intelligent viewer can see that the new ending contains some important logical problems.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a depressing story about the worst family ever!

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”