Rating (3 out of 5)

Scott and I have had discussions about the purpose of movies and how the story is told.  One of my arguments is that after working all week, you sometimes you just want a story that is straightforward and you don’t have to sort out why someone made the movie.  Florida Project is a movie that I am still trying to figure out what the purpose was.

The movie follows a little girl, her mom and the hotel manager.  The little girl and her mom live in hotel.  The mom doesn’t have steady work, and sells perfume in the parking lot, and eventually prostituting in the room, while her daughter was in the bathtub.

The mom is always angry and aggressive.  Many of the problems that happen to her are of her own making.  She has taught her daughter the same bad habits.  So from my point of view it was hard to by sympathetic for them.  The manager was trying to get the hotel to survive from day to day.   He shows care for the tenants while trying to keep the hotel afloat.

This caring is shown in variety of ways.  So my complaint of the movie is it bounced around a bit, and there were a few scenes that made the movie drag.  While I enjoyed the managers perspective, the scene with the pedophile may have been unnecessary.  If he was the focus of the movie, then it would have been a very powerful scene.

I did appreciate the insight on how hard it must be for people in this position to get by from day to day, and how hard it must be to be a single mom in these circumstances.  That introspective was very interesting, like the part where they have to move out of their room, so they aren’t considered a permanent resident.

I also thought the comparison of the two moms and their actions after the fire was insightful.  The fire was started by the kids, but when everyone goes to see the fire, the kids are not anxious to go to see spectacle.  One mom questions her son, while our main mom takes her daughters picture in front of the fire.

If we had shaved 10 to 15 minutes of extra scenes from the movie and just a bit more focus, I think this would have been in stronger film.