Where the Crawdads Sing – 2022- PG13
I’m guessing practically everyone who reported to the theater to watch Where the Crawdads Sing read Delia Owen’s 2018 novel of the same name. As usual, the book was so much better that it’s hard to fairly grade the film. My rather wishy-washy summation is this: Enjoyed the book, a lot. Enjoyed the movie, mostly. The cinematography was stunning. Although the novel was set in the marshes of North Carolina, filming actually took place in Louisiana, in the wetlands on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. Score one for the movie. The characters that played Kya, Tate and Chase matched up to the images the book created in my imagination. Score two for the movie. The biggest gap was the lack of character development for “Marsh Girl” Kya, a gifted wildlife artist, self-taught naturalist and gritty survivor of abuse, neglect and abandonment, by family and community. Focus on any of those. Please. Instead the emphasis was on the Kya/Tate/Chase “kiss and don’t tell” romantic interests. We lost the depth of Kya to the shallows of unrequited love. The reliance on flashbacks felt disjointed. As a fellow reviewer penned (far better than I), “…it elongates a predictable love story, distances us from any suspense of learning the outcome and makes the court case feel longer than the O.J. Simpson trial.” Lastly, the casting of Kya’s attorney Tom Milton (David Stathairn) was so Atticus Finch that I could not help drifting from Barkley Cove to Maycomb, Alabama. I kept expecting Scout to pop up in the courtroom’s segregated balcony. So there you have it. Enjoyed the movie…mostly. Suffice to say, if you have to choose, skip the movie and read the book.
