Must See Movie...

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Defense attorney Richard Ramsay (Keanu Reeves) has known his new client Mike all his life. The teenager is accused of killing his dominating father Boone Lassiter (Jim Belushi). It doesn't help that Mike won't speak to Richard whose only strategy seems to be rope a dope. Mike's mother Loretta (Renée Zellweger) is concerned. Janelle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) joins the defense team.There is a reveal at the end of the movie. I swear that one minute before the reveal, I thought that Ramsay needed more connections to the Lassiters. The plot needs more twists and turns before the reveal. Instead, it seems to concentrate all the twists into one big twist. There is obviously something hidden but it needs a better setup. While the courtroom stays just compelling enough, it could have been more and this could have been a great thriller.

Good courtroom drama. Well written script. It seemed obvious but was not.

Extremely tedious, with poorly written dialogues and crappy acting. Renee Zellweger,usually a fine actress, seems bored and annoyed playing this nonsense. Reeves is at his usual blankness. The actor who plays the defendant is just awful, a lizard has more facial expression than him. He's probably related to the producers. To be short, the plot twist in the end is ridiculous: if they already had the whole story made up (Renee killed his openly abusive husband in self-defense, after years of beating), why the hell did she let his son take the blame, even knowing that he would probably go to jail for life? What a nice mom! BTW, it seems really easy to get away with murder: he abused me, that's it, not guilty! Just terrible, don't waste an hour and a half of you life watching this. You have been warned

Many of the relevant details in this story come from flashback sequences out of the courtroom. As a result, the memories are assembled into a clear hierarchy that's less about how these memories work and more about giving a clear plot framework. The cast of "The Whole Truth" is convincing on the whole, the best being probably Belushi but R. Zellweger very good as well. Maybe the final twist leaves a little to be desired but the story holds water on the whole. Not an extremely original court movie but well acted and directed.