REVIEW - THANKS FOR SHARING

Subjectively, you know, Thanks for Sharing isn't a bad film at all. I think it helps to approach it from the angle Stuart Blumberg would like you to approach it from - think of it as a sweet, pleasant rom-com (which it is) and you'll probably enjoy yourself. At least, that is until Blumberg would like you to approach it from another angle entirely, and you're left to decide whether to make the effort and go with him, or rail against it. Go with him, and again, you could enjoy yourself. But the film, as a whole, is ruined. Blumberg keeps starting anew, washing the slate clean with his tonal and narrative shifts and never devoting enough time to making any single element of his film work as it ought to. Most of the cast appear happy to bask in the banality of their roles, and they're perhaps wise to, as none of them embarrass themselves and all turn in vibrant performances. Mark Ruffalo invests a little more in his recovering sex addict, and reaps greater rewards, with a performance that achieves very much more than anything else in this film. There's an openness to his work here that elevates some of the more cliched paths his character is taken down; would that I could say that about the other storylines, which adhere to formula with a faithfulness that isn't worthy of the often witty dialogue that accompanies it. But I wouldn't state that Thanks for Sharing can't work out what kind of movie it wants to be. It is what it is, and seems comfortable with that, and much of it is neatly mounted. As an experience, though, I wasn't comfortable with that. Sure, in the end, it's just fluff, but fluff can be good, it can be great, it can be bad. And I can't work out what kind of fluff Thanks for Sharing actually is.