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Created May 09, 2013 07:56PM PST • Edited May 09, 2013 09:01PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   MUD is worth the date with your wife but like all the movies made with the intent to be a gripping attempt at winning someone an academy award, MUD falls short. While not certainly not boiler plate, the script falls short. Perhaps I will be forever disappointed with movies of mystery cast along a low gradient river after seeing LONESTAR, but again there was little new in the story line from beginning to end. Maybe a life of constant and instant surprises finally has hit the “E” on the tank of Hollywood’s creativity, save for the concept of a vessel of freedom suspended in the dense understory of adult life.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   When you read the cast list you know it won’t be a dud, but in the era Jennifer Lawrence and Phillip Seymour Hoffman maybe the leading actor should consider a role where he is thought to have showered and the leading actress may need to be something other than how the blond cheerleader turns out after high school.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    The film is not a dud, but for crying out loud etiher this cast could have done better or the script should have been given to Jack Black for another go at Hollywood’s highest honor.

11. Direction OK 2.5

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals OK 2.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    For once, it would have been nice to masculinify a good guy, maybe the crazy scuba-diving uncle.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

    Given the other disappointments with the movie, they may as well should have added a dogstyle scene with the river rats after a course of macoroni and cheese.

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

    Mud’s redirection of his disappointments towards two youthful albeit hillbilly lads was a touch irritating.

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    somewhere between natural and glib

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0