"A pointless, inert drama"

Reviewing a film I won't bother to see:

.... The prospect of playing famous people who declaim at length about large ideas reliably attracts top actors, and so Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode step into the roles of Freud and “Jack” Lewis, as he was known to friends.

Mr. Hopkins, giving one of the laziest performances of his career, doesn’t even bother to dispense with his ordinary British accent....

Mr. St. Germain sets his fictitious play on Sept. 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war against Germany. Lewis, by a previous invitation, arrives at Freud’s house in Hampstead for a cordial introductory chat that turns into an impassioned debate about faith, sex, truth and even jokes. Not a bad idea for a play, but the script has about as much depth as a term paper written by someone who spent 10 minutes with each subject’s Wikipedia entry. For supposed titans, these two sound a lot like college freshmen. ....

The play, and the film, intend to set out dramatized versions of grand arguments as they might have been made by two formidable men, inviting the audience to step right up and hear the question of whether God exists resolved in an entertaining hour and 48 minutes. Yet the script doesn’t even succeed in making either man seem interesting, much less historically important. ....

Tiresome digressions mixed in with philosophical banalities add up to a pointless, inert drama.

Kyle Smith, "‘Freud’s Last Session’ Review: Religion on the Couch," The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2023.