The Dressmaker Review

It's not often that while watching a movie, I get a strong desire to walk out, but while watching The Dressmaker, I felt that desire often.

The Dressmaker is about a women named Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage (played by Kate Winslet) who, after 25 years, returns to her hometown of Dungatar in the Australian outback to take care of her sick mother. While in Dungatar a lot of strange and random things happen, but the story mainly focuses on Tilly trying to figure out what happened 25 years ago when a young boy named Stewart Pettyman had died and she is unsure if she is the one that killed him.

Outside of Kate Winslet's performance, I hated this movie. The tone was all over the place. At times it would be a serious drama and the next moment it would be a slapstick comedy. I found these shifts in tone to be very off-putting and distracting. A lot of the characters in the movie just seem to be way too over the top and unnecessary. For example there is the town doctor who is a hunchback and he just stumbles around town and his wife uses pillows to bounce him around town. I just never understood why he was there. Also so much goes on in this movie that the main storyline of wondering what happened to Stewart Pettyman isn't even brought up for large portions of the movie. Many times throughout the movie something would happen and I would wonder what is going on and what does this have to do with anything.

Another thing that bothered me was the age of the characters in the movie. Tilly's love interest in the movie is played by Liam Hemsworth and I think you are supposed to believe that he went to school with Tilly when Stewart died. I can accept that Liam's character is in his late 20's but believing Tilly is as well was not happening for me. Because of the actor's age difference I wasn't feeling the romance and never really felt a chemistry between them. Partly that can be due to the fact that I don't think Liam is that good of an actor.

I did not enjoy The Dressmaker at all. The story and tone were all of the place. Many of the characters are annoying and serve no purpose. The love story never made sense with chemistry that was nonexistent. It's not often I feel like I'm wasting my time watching a movie, but I felt that way throughout watching The Dressmaker.

1 out of 5 Stars