Serena (2015), R, ★

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in costume...again.

It seemed like another history lesson as the movie takes place in the Great Depression. What can you do for money? What business will take off during the Depression and then afterwards? A businessman has to take some risks to accommodate all of his finances and supplies to overcome what America has gone through over the past few years. However, a man's lumber business is slowly crumbling as workers get hurt and there is not much profit. Unfortunately, despite the talented stardom of its two principal actors, the movie crumbles fast and is as wooden as the wood in the movie.

George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) manages a lumber business and because his business is crumbling, he is having trouble acquiring loans from a bank. During his misfortunes with the business and its workers, he catches his eye on a young woman riding a horse, Serena Shaw (Jennifer Lawrence), who has lost her family in a fire in Colorado. George just run after her in the woods like that they are in some sort of Disney fairy tale and he asks her hand in marriage. And, what do you know, they get married.

The marriage commences into a rocky situation as a woman named Rachel (Ana Ularu) that George previously slept with, carrying his child. Serena disregards and dismisses the situation as it had nothing to do with them. Serena tries to help men from his business as one man is bitten from a rattlesnake and she also meets his associates, Buchanan and Galloway (David Dencik and Rhys Ifans). There's a little riot as the men led by Sheriff McDowell (Toby Jones) as he says that the business is providing more harm to the trees than good. George responds that the men has jobs and that they are using wood for good business. However, it gets out of control as it involves his business, innocent bystanders and Serena.

Serena making George feeling better.

No! No! No! This movie started out ok but then the movie spiraled downward and never looked back as it center superciliousness in front of a historic and serious event. For example, there's a moment in the film that Serena is training to tame an eagle so men can know that "a woman tamed the eagle". What the hell does it have to do with the movie? I think that the director tries to become too ambitious but then it is a massive collision especially in the second half, as the films deals with acts of murder, betrayal and drama that felt like another slasher movie. It's almost identical to either Gone Girl or Fatal Attraction.

Without question, this is definitely Jennifer Lawrence's and Bradley Cooper's worst performances of their careers. Lawrence tries to become a chameleon in her character in a different setting, however, she blends her character with nuttiness and provides cheesiness as she supplies a potential villainess. It does not work at all. Cooper tries to perform an accent with some sort Bostonian/Australian mix maybe with a hint of Southern authenticity but no, he looks like he just stepped out from another movie and put on his costumes and just come to play and get paid. There's no character development. And, Toby Jones seems miscast in this film as the sheriff.

The only positive aspect to take away from this movie is that the costumes and production design are decent but not too special. It's the drama that makes you cringe and get bored while it dials and dumbs down into superficial craze and murderous rage to make the movie more interesting. This is an epic disaster from beginning to end that you do not much sympathy towards the characters or have any interest whatsoever towards the time period and what all of these people are going through. They needed a lot more depth in that story. But, there's always an interference and unfortunately it was Cooper's and Lawrence's characters' story.

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