Everyone in "Feast of Love" is messed up in some way, but none of those ways make them interesting. This is a movie that
thinks having an "ensemble" cast means that there's no need to have a straightforward story with a beginning, middle, and end. The film is all middle, and the characters just sort of wander around in it. It was filmed in Portland, where I live, and much of the action centers around a coffeehouse at the corner of N. Shaver and N. Mississippi, a mile from my apartment. I used to go to this coffeehouse. It's called Jitters in the movie, but it's called A Fresh Pot in real life. One of the reasons I stopped going was that the people who worked there always played their background music too loud, to where it stopped being background music and started being like a nightclub. Plus, I found a better place, Albina Press , even closer to my apartment, with a much more work-conducive atmosphere. Is any of this interesting to you? Well, the movie wasn't interesting to me, so there. Based on Charles Baxter's novel and adapted by Allison Burnett ( "Resurrecting the Champ," "Autumn in New York" ), "Feast of Love" is narrated with characteristic wise bemusement by Morgan Freeman, who also plays a college professor named Harry Stevenson. Harry is on a leave of absence right now in the wake of a personal loss, and he spends his days at Jitters (where the music is at a reasonable volume), owned by Bradley Thomas (Greg Kinnear). Bradley's wife has just left him for another woman, an inevitability that Bradley did not see coming despite having been sitting right there when the two women met and began flirting with each other.
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