Critic Reviews
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It’s far too dreary to be a comedy, and its social commentary is often blunt and ineffective. Worse, the narrative has no momentum, spending three hours on the tedious minutiae of relationships among more than a dozen characters, most of whom are barely fleshed out.
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As a television series, The Casual Vacancy stands on its own, but it has only a goblet’s worth of Potter magic.
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The performances are fine, the story lines appropriately interwoven. Everything is totally competent.... [But] the details are the story, and simplifying them and sanding them down leaves Vacancy with a real dull streak.
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The story--while it may have been fun to read on paper--is slight and even puzzling on screen.
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By losing the emotional core of the film essentially after the first act--the death of Kinnear's saintly Fairbrother--the film spends the next three-plus hours trying to fill the void. Fools rush in to fill it, but because most of them are treated with such contempt, or pity, none can or possibly could.
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A small town, character-driven drama that’s enjoyable enough even if the characters are not entirely believable.
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Writer Sarah Phelps has done her best, but short of throwing out Rowling's characters and plot, there was no real way to make The Casual Vacancy bearable.
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Despite the treacly smugness, which doesn’t become fully evident until the third episode, it’s easy to get caught up in The Casual Vacancy’s soapy drama and to admire a number of the performances.
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The decision to build out Krystal’s story is one of the best choices of this adaption, giving depth and shading to a story that more often swings from sourness to melodrama.
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In the end, this dreary British import proves that the only thing more boring than agitprop drama is someone else's agitprop drama.
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There are so many characters, frankly, that Casual Vacancy spends virtually all of the first hour just introducing them. The second expands upon that somewhat, before the third finally seeks to bring a measure of tragic resolution to it all, while leaving a number of threads a bit too casually dangling.
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The Casual Vacancy was riveting while it lasted. When it was over, though, I wanted to stick a fork in my face.
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Despite its quaint picturesque town backdrop, The Casual Vacancy is an ugly little piece of work, filled with bitterness, sniping, selfishness, and cruelty. There is no character other than Barry who seems remotely appealing or interesting.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 16
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Mixed: 4 out of 16
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Negative: 5 out of 16
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May 9, 2015
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May 3, 2015
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Apr 30, 2015