'Tumbledown' - Movie Review

Rebecca Hall plays Hannah Miles, the widow of a musician who created one great album and then died before the public even knew it existed. He's been dead a couple years and she's trying to write a biography about him, but it's not going well. Enter Andrew McCabe (played by Jason Sudeikis), a music academic and writer who comes to her small town in Maine hoping to write about her husband. They butt heads - but after considerable initial resistance, she agrees to work with him.

Both of the main characters are a bit unpleasant - she's wrapped up in her grief and way too protective of her husband's legacy, he's written as a sarcastic and obnoxious New Yorker. Both have partners of a kind. It's a credit to the two leads that they manage to make these people in any way likeable, but I had some trouble summoning interest in the outcome of the movie. Music that's supposed to be from the album is used throughout the movie: this means they've tied themselves to a one-artist soundtrack, and the music really isn't that good. Some of the jokes are good.

Hall and Sudeikis do well enough with the uneven material they're handed, but the movie as a whole is an unappealing mess.