User Reviews

With Megan Griffith, we have another debut director trying to make a name for herself, toiling in the crowded field of indie 'field of dreams'. Griffiths' protagonist is Francine (Amy Seimetz), a slightly depressed waitress at an all-night truck stop diner, who dreams of escaping her stifling, mundane world. Francine goes through the motions by having occasional sexual encounters in the bathroom at the diner with Ty, one of her foster brother Corey's band mates. Later Corey makes a pitch to get intimate with his foster sister, but Francine will have none of it. What she really wants is to get it on with Oliver, the handsome, enigmatic trucker, who lives nearby, but won't reciprocate because he's a happily married family man.

If the 'nothing happens' relationship between Francine and Oliver, isn't enough for you, then perhaps you'll find the subplot involving the diner's owner, Stu, more to your liking. Stu is an alcoholic, who wants to spend more quality time with his estranged teenage daughter but is stymied by his ex-wife who's lost faith in him. The big dramatic moment of the film comes when Stu allows his daughter to be the designated driver on their way home from a dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The only problem is that the daughter has no driver's license and ends up hitting a guard rail, with Stu ending up in the hospital with a nasty concussion. Stu soon finds out that visitation rights with his daughter have been permanently terminated by the ex-wife, due to his remarkable, poor judgment.

As is the case in many indie dramas today, self-hating characters always seem to be popping up all over the place. It's my belief that the lower a character's self-esteem, the more pretentious the overall story will be. That's because losers (also known as 'sad sacks'), don't make for good drama. Stu is the perfect example of the downbeat loser, which make so many of these indies, hard to wade through. Francine isn't much better, with her sullen demeanor and lack of direction in life. While Stu is a cliché, Francine is simply too ordinary to be of interest. One hopes something unusual happens between Francine and the hunky trucker, but when that potential romance fizzles, the viewer invariably feels cheated. Even Francine's decision to leave small town life, disappoints, since again such a move feels undistinguished from a thousand other scenes, found in films of this ilk.

'The Off Hours' is on solid ground with uniformly good performances, despite the stodgy script. With better material, Amy Seimetz might end up as a true find. The same can be said for Gergana Mellin, who shines in the wholly underdeveloped part of Jelena, the randy Serbian waitress.

Ultimately, it's director Griffith, whose love for such generic material, must be held accountable. That's not to say that she doesn't have an eye for compelling visuals—some have compared the look of the film to an 'Edward Hopper' painting. But when a film sinks like the Titanic, from the weight of egregious glacial pacing, one wonders why Ms. Griffith chose not to concentrate on the most fundamental aspect of basic film making—it's called editing!