TheRetroCritic

We are not impressed.

Adapting a play should be pretty straight-forward: you've got pretty much the whole script right there! But sometimes, movies and plays just don't translate well to each other. Surely a talented director like Roman Polanski would know how to side-step such an issue though. Right? Well... yes and no. From very early on, it's pretty clear that after a Haneke-style opening shot we'll pretty much be stuck in this one apartment with all the main characters for the entirety of the film. I can see why Polanski thought that would work: the claustrophobic setting coupled with the stress and awkwardness bouncing off the walls creating an unnerving sense of "get me the hell outta here!". Fine. It's a stagy concept but I can see it working. Unfortunately, not really the case here. Had the story progressed in a different, more chaotic and entertaining way then this could have worked brilliantly (see The Dinner Game ). But the banality of the core premise's