Conceptually “Perfect Strangers” is sound. The idea of a dinner party turned sour by close inspection of friends’ lives and the nuances of cheating and relationship issues is pretty interesting. By framing the dinner in a manner that more gets revealed slowly throughout the night, and then quickly at another point is very good for pacing, and makes an otherwise dull viewing experience very manageable. In addition, the ending is well set. Typically, films in the style of ‘it was all just a dream’ or similar scenarios are a bit insincere and demonstrate a lack of expertise in the writing process, and possibly the director too. However, in this film that style of ending actually works fairly well, as it shows a true what if question instead of just negating the whole story. This combined with some other aspects make the film palatable and a worthwhile watch, although not worthy of a revisit. The movie is a little bit unimaginative in a sense that the plot is fairly one dimensional. They show up to dinner, look at everyones’ phone, and they are all cheating. Done. It's kind of boring but is executed well enough to make the film decent. One place the film struggles the hardest is in the realism department. At first glance everything is completely realistic, from setting, to characters, to dialogue, however the story devices are not super believable. Why would everyone be getting so many texts and calls during this dinner? Is no one else on the planet eating, or busy, or even likely to pick a time not in this two hour span to pour their hearts out over the phone? Not super believable, but if you do not think about it very much it's easy enough to forget. Also, the whole concept of the game in the first place is a little questionable. It's obviously a bad idea. How insecure and bored does a person need to be to suggest this? Surely there's better things to do. It's a little pathetic on all of their parts to ‘participate’ in this, but maybe it could happen. Overall, the film is just alright, not super special but still worth a watch.
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