Am I Missing Something?

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Premises are interesting. I would always watch a movie about/focused on the life of a retired/depressed rock star, factual or fictional... And indeed, Penn delivers a somewhat convincing performance as (Robert Smith-inspired?) Cheyenne (poor choice of pseudonym, if you ask me, but hey, there's also a band called "The Pieces of Sh*t", so)...The problem is: that annoying voice!, and... Well, everything else. This is a pretty boring film, overall. Frances wasn't convincing, nor was anybody else besides Sean.Sure, there are funny parts, but they're not enough to prevent the yawns, or fight the desire of doing something else during most part of it.My 5/10 is strictly because of Penn's genius, indeed one hell of an actor, but he deserved a better script and a better... Well, everything.Honorable mention to the David Byrne/Will Oldham teaming up to perform a satisfying soundtrack, especially the main track "Lay & Love", excellent in my opinion.

If you come up with a complicated and quirky plot, there is almost no way to avoid people accusing you of trying too hard to be "indie." The core of this plot is a good one, although it's hampered by throwing too many ingredients in the soup. Hence, like other reviewers, I too will accuse the makers of trying a bit too hard. But I appreciate the originality of the plot. I've noticed that most small films tend to focus on depressed or outsider type people. I'm guessing that's because the people who make them are that way. But it would be nice once in a while to see a small film about essentially happy people growing in some way, or overcoming an obstacle.If you took a bunch of drugs, you haven't worked in 20 years, you live in a dreary place, and you're going through a midlife crisis, you would move and talk slowly and perhaps softly. Also, if you were a cross dresser, you might speak with an effeminate voice. So i get all that. But the mumbling aspect was a bit much. Unless you want to interpret that a guy who made millions from his voice, is now crippled in the voice. The mumbling was my biggest complaint. Even if he had cranked it up a tiny notch, I would have been satisfied.I think the sex scene was put in there specifically to justify why a woman would stay with such a loser for so long. Make no mistake about it. This guy is a loser. His awareness of that fact is the main source of his depression.What I liked about the plot was the idea of needing a purpose or mission to get yourself out of a funk or grow up. But having his dad be American and orthodox Jewish is a shock to the system. There were no previous references to his even being American, and none about growing up as an orthodox Jew. Wouldn't you see some vestiges of Jewishness at his house, or in his mannerisms or conversation? As other reviewers mentioned, it was clear that he had no real interest in the Holocaust or his dad's history. He just felt remorse at not giving his father a chance. Couple that with needing a purpose and you have his mission.Most of the people he interacted with in small town America were not random. They were family members of the Nazi he was hunting or knew something about him. But we did get a little slice of American life in the process. Although here's a tip to non-American indie film enthusiasts. Not all Americans are quirky. Many just work, live, love, pray, volunteer, serve, and laugh. This guy was always about depression and regrets, but never about rage. So it's no surprise that he had no rage for the Nazi. Another person might have, because although the humiliation he caused his father was relatively mild, he was still involved with slaughter.I'm OK with the subplots about the woman with a missing son and the Gothic teen. It makes sense. The girl was the type he would have hung out with in his own teens and he was basically stuck at that stage of life. Meanwhile the woman's son apparently skipped town the way our main character had years ago.I love the Talking Heads song. So I certainly appreciate the idea of building a story around it. "Home, this must be the place." You could say that our protagonist was searching for a home in this world his whole life.

This one, despite its cast and talents involved, is only ho-hum and rather slow moving except for a few genius lines. As I wrote before in one of my reviews for writer/director Paolo Sorrentino, his characters depend too much on a stylized way of existence and just because they may be inspired by real life persons or events, that does not make them more believable! Sean Penn is in his "I am Sam" mode, with a bit of Ozzy Osborne thrown in - not a good mixture. His rock star's motivation to go looking for the WW II humiliation source of his late dad's made no sense and escaped me completely particularly since he hadn't spoken to him in 30 years!

Cheyenne (Sean Penn) is a weird looking retired rock star living in Dublin. He spends his days hanging out with his young friend Mary (Eve Hewson, Bono's daughter) trying to set her up with a straight laced guy working at the mall. After the death of his father whom he hasn't talked to in 30 years, he finds that he's been hunting a little known Auschwitz guard named Aloise Lange. So he decides to continue the hunt himself.There is nothing wrong with weird, and I like Sean Penn's odd looking soft spoken ex-rocker character. I like his relationship with Mary. It's funny that he keeps trying to set her up with somebody who has nothing in common with her. Then it takes a turn into the surreal.It's like they abandoned a good movie to do another movie. All the characters in the first act are basically dropped once he goes on the Nazi hunt. The nice semi-father-daughter relationship is dropped. The wife is dropped. The final reveal is kinda interesting, but it's not worth the lost opportunities of good character relationships.