Universal PicturesLet's be honest—we've all been dying to see Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt return to the big screen together since Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But now that they've done just that with their new movie, By the Sea, we have to wonder if this was worth the wait. Movie reviewers collectively agree that Angelina's third directing effort is a bust, and it looks like their swoon-worthy marriage isn't enough to attract viewers.
Variety notes that not even the biggest Brangelina fans are going to be able to hop onboard this boat, as it's better suited for viewers who take more interest in visuals than content. "Meandering and overlong in ways that will test the patience of even die-hard Brangelina fans, the film ultimately feels too dramatically reductive and obvious to pull off its desired cocktail of Albee and Antonioni, limiting its appeal primarily to those viewers who can get drunk on visual pleasure alone," Justin Chang writes.
"Neither this nor the tentative, surface-level interactions that follow are enough to turn them into compellingly drawn figures, leaving the actors with little to do but fall back on their not-inconsiderable star wattage. Jolie Pitt proves a canny enough director of her own husband, who brings his strong physicality to bear on the role of Roland in an effectively restrained way...But the actress struggles to spin a coherent performance from what feels like a collection of tortured, grief-stricken poses, and there's something too studied about the way her outdoor attire..."
The Hollywood Reporter argues that pretty much nothing happens throughout the two-hour film. "They sulk, they smoke, they drink, they spy on the honeymooning couple in the next room through a peephole in the wall," writes Todd McCarthy. "In fact, if it weren't for the latter, hardly anything at all would happen in By the Sea, the kind of vanity project you don't see much of anymore."
He continues, "With such flat-lining and repetitive scenes dominating, two hours is far too long to make an audience wait for a payoff that is hardly about to save the film from its own stasis and dramatic flatness."
The Wrap claims By the Sea "teeters on parody," and say Angelina and Brad "star as an unhappily married couple who spend so much of the film locked in wordless, passive-aggressive battle that by the time they start talking to each other, it's too late to care about them."
The review continues, "If By the Sea weren't so aggressively humorless, it might almost qualify as camp, so unsuccessful is its pursuit of weighty drama. Unintentional laughs are hard to come by here; instead, there are yawns aplenty."
Forbes also noted that Angelina's latest project borders on parody. "It's slow, ponderous, talky, and mostly about tiny details and minute character moments," the review says. "It's such a loving recreation of the form that it occasionally flirts with self-parody."
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(E! and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
Hear even more from the star herself about her new movie.