A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.0

A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie Review

Nah, that joke's too easy.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III April 17, 2023

Director Mo McCrae swings and misses hard with his debut A Lot of Nothing, a wildly unfocused and sloppily-written dramatic thriller that feels like several mediocre films stitched together with the seams still showing. Framing a thin narrative around the unfortunate ongoing trend of victims killed by trigger-happy police officers, the script begins to unravel soon after its characters begin speaking. Though not without a handful of visual surprises and redeeming moments, there's precious little to take away from what might be a successful satire in better hands.

A Lot of Nothing at least starts off well enough with an introductory scene that runs for over 17 minutes and features its two main characters, young black married couple James (Y'lan Noel) and Vanessa (Cleopatra Coleman), in a rather impressive single, unbroken shot. In it, they attempt to unwind from a very stressful day at their respective jobs -- he's a high-priced lawyer, she's in finance -- but are interrupted by the evening news, which paints the familiar picture of a hasty police shooting and a young black death. James and Vanessa recognize the accused officer as next-door neighbor Brian (Justin Hartley), and decide something -- anything -- needs to be done. A slacktivist Facebook post? They can't agree on the wording. Knocking on his door? Maybe later. For now, Vanessa is more interested in having big, bad James display his dominance over her, demanding he act out their fantasy next-door confrontation with her as the accused. This is the first confusing decision made during A Lot of Nothing, but it damn sure won't be the last.

The rest of A Lot of Nothing -- which runs for almost 90 more minutes after the extended opening scene, and yes you'll check your watch at least a few times -- is more traditionally crafted; there aren't many characters or locations to keep track of, and everything is spelled out in fewer uncertain terms. After yet another stressful day at work full of racially-driven microaggressions, James unwinds with a quick workout at home while Vanessa returns from the grocery store to start dinner for their expected dinner guests, James' brother Jamal (Shamier Anderson) and his pregnant wife, Candy (Lex Scott Davis). Before she goes inside, Vanessa spies Brian in the driveway and angrily confronts him before being accosted and sent away, trembling. After a heated confrontation with James she decides to retaliate, forcing Brian into their home at gunpoint for a long, awkward conversation. When their dinner guests arrive an hour of so later, things get complicated since their struggling victim sits bound and gagged only a few rooms away from the dinner table.

So what exactly is A Lot of Nothing? A state-of-the-union address regarding black frustration in an unfair society? A farce about fruitless, base-level reactions to unsolvable problems? Good old-fashioned class warfare? Nope, it's just a goddamn mess, a poorly-drawn and oddly structured series of character-driven interactions painted in broad strokes from soapbox height. Every person in its world is a confusing caricature, even when such hardline exaggerations aren't necessary: Jamal's an aggressive conspiracy theorist and Candy's a vegan who believes in "cleansing auras", leading to a dogpile of awkward dinner party moments that stand in way of its central plot during most of the second act. It soon devolves into an even bigger mess, an aimless series of arguments, threats, and other detours that build to a vague and formless climax that resolves exactly nothing, its characters not so much growing from the experience as trudging through it as the script demands. Who is this for? What's the point, exactly, and why should we care?

Adding to the frustration is A Lot of Nothing's admittedly impressive cinematography and occasionally amusing stabs at black comedy during a handful of darker moments, which show obvious competence that stands in contrast with its astronomically less effective material. Whatever writer-director Mo McCrae and co-writer Sarah Kelly Kaplan were going for completely fell out of their hands here, as this misguided message movie absolutely fails in its weak attempts to be persuasive, accessible, or even entertaining during the bulk of its 104-minute running time. If I didn't have to watch these films to the end, I'm pretty sure this would've been switched off before the halfway point.

Nonetheless, a film with this kind of polarizing subject matter might still find a fanbase, and they'll at least appreciate RLJ Entertainment's Blu-ray package: featuring a rock-solid A/V presentation and one short bonus featurette, A Lot of Nothing is at least a modestly-priced release that should easily beat any available streaming version.

A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Lot of Nothing's strong cinematography is at least rendered faithfully on this solid 1080p transfer, which shows off its limited locations in style with warm ambient light, cool contrasting values, attractive production design, and detailed close-ups without incident. Color saturation, texture detail, black levels, and depth are all very good or better, and no obvious compression issues -- safe for trace artifacts -- could be detected on this single-layered disc, which proves to be more than enough real estate for what ultimately amounts to less than two hours of total HD content. This is great work and, despite my obvious reservations about the story, A Lot of Nothing is at least nice to look at.

A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Similarly, the DTS-HD 5.1 is a solid effort with few sonic surprises but no real drawbacks. Dialogue is clean and crisply rendered, the mostly jazzy original score by David Sardy -- which I didn't really care for -- nonetheless enjoys a rich dynamic range, and discrete/low-end effects are handled nicely with an occasionally strong atmosphere. So while A Lot of Nothing doesn't really carve out any new sonic territory for the genre, it certainly gets the job done and likewise easily beats any compressed streaming version out there.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during the main feature only.

A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes of "A Lot of Nothing" (8:17) - Writer-director Mo McCrae, stars Y'lan Noel and Cleopatra Coleman, and others speak about the film's production, including the fact that it tells its story from a uniquely black perspective. Considering its two main characters are insanely rich, I'm not exactly sure most audience will be able to identify with their perspective regardless of color. But yep, this is one of those promotional featurettes where absolutely nothing went wrong and the movie turned out perfect, so just take it at face value.

A Lot of Nothing Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Director Mo McCrae's debut A Lot of Nothing is, in no uncertain terms, a poor debut. A painfully misguided message movie with a weak script and awkwardly exaggerated characters, it fails to shed any light on the serious subject matter at its core. I'm not saying it's completely unlikable, but there's so much working against this film that it's impossible to recommend sight unseen. RLJ Entertainment's Blu-ray offers a solid A/V presentation and one bonus featurette at a fairly reasonable price... but for obvious reasons, this one's "try before you buy" at the very most.