Been very disappointed this month with movies I thought I was going to love and really looked forward to. First, “Blink Twice”, now “The Front Room”, which was a waste of a lot of great talent on both the directing and acting sides.
The tagline is basic: After the death of his father, a man in a biracial marriage with a baby on the way, is forced to take in his evil, Bible-thumping, stepmother and his black wife gets stuck taking care of her.
That’s it. There is no real horror, drama, or comedy to this film because there is no plot. It’s an hour and 26 minutes of Brandy and the stepmom-in-law sparring nonsensically. Because any real sista, would’ve put her racist, stepmom-in-law in a home the FIRST time she pooped all over herself and smeared it around the house then smirked like she did it on purpose and she had to clean it up. She would have been placed in a nursing home by the next day. There was zero compelling reason to put up with this abuse for weeks on end, especially at 9 months pregnant, and then with a new baby at home. Based on a short story, this should have been a short film, if made at all.
There were a dozen ways this film could have gone in more interesting directions. Like why wasn’t the husband somehow in on a sinister plot? Or why wasn’t the evil stepmom there to steal the soul of Brandy or the baby to either make herself younger or resurrect her dead husband?
The acting is great, especially from Kathryn Hunter, as the crazy stepmom, Solange. She is adequately mean and gross. But again, she has zero to work with other than being gross and smearing poop. Brandy is Brandy and Andrew Burnap as Norman (which seemed like a nod to Norman Bates) was also believable.
This film was just a scatological, excrement-filled, grotesque, nothing burger. Wait for it to stream and even then I would seriously think about whether you want to waste 86 minutes of your life on this mess.
