Home > Chicago Movies > Movie Review > My Blueberry Nights

Broken-hearted Elizabeth (Norah Jones) spends nights chatting with New York café employee Jeremy (Jude Law) before she takes off to work at various bars and restaurants around the country to forget her ex. While she meets eccentric characters like high-stakes gambler Leslie (Natalie Portman), Elizabeth writes postcards to Jeremy, who, as it turns out, is still hung up over his ex (Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power).

Big question: Is writer-director Wong Kar Wai's ("2046") film juicier than the tepid response it received at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival?

Skip it: Slow, jazzy and totally aimless, "My Blueberry Nights" wants to be a Jones-y ballad but sounds more like a Fergie pop song, since the film has no poetry in its words or pain in its heart. While Jones' singing voice is full of longing and conviction, the sweet tremble that can bring down the house is gone when she speaks on screen, in a thin performance that basically brings down the movie.

Catch it: If you're intrigued by Jeremy's admission that security cameras don't actually keep people from stealing. We can only request that you use this information for good, not evil.

Bottom line: Amen to Law, Portman and Marshall, whose performances make you forget that "Blueberry" is sappy and pretentious in its look at relationships while depicting characters who bear no relationship to reality. Instead of focusing on the carcass of love gone bad, the film is merely the flies buzzing around it, wallowing in sadness with little to do or say.

Bonus: Leslie remarks that you can be cheap or lucky but not both. So if you bet big in Vegas, things have to go your way!

Add a comment