American Pastoral

The whole production feels verged on the perch of camp.

It's far from perfect, but it's not a bad stab at tricky material.

McGregor and Connelly are good as dad and mum, Hannah Nordberg and Dakota Fanning even better as, at different ages, Merry.

It's honourable, it's well-intentioned, but it's lame.

There's a crippling lack of emotional depth and honesty - it's hard to decide which is more stridently melodramatic, the bombast of the score or the shrill performances.

It is, however, a heartfelt and painstaking attempt at dealing in filmic terms with the complex and ambiguous subject matter of the book.

American Pastoral is oddly flat and uninvolving for the most part, despite the convulsions it represents.

There is promise for better outputs by McGregor in the future, with kinder material, but American Pastoral is joyless.

What could have been an interesting look at what happens when radicalization comes home is neutered by some swiss cheese storytelling - lots of holes.

Its daring look at adolescent rebellion and adult disgruntlement - even when presented more as a history lesson than commercial entertainment - is perturbingly intriguing.