Doubt

It’s always fun to watch Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but this movie just didn’t click for me. I understood what they were going for and trying to say, but it just didn’t come across as very compelling. Except for providing an opportunity to chew some scenery, I can’t imagine what it was about this movie that drew either Streep or Hoffman to the production.
Even as I’m writing this, I feel guilty for not getting much out of this movie. I really wanted to like it. In the end, though, what sank the movie in my opinion was perhaps something in the American psyche. Maybe we’re too jaded to be shocked by the revelation that a priest might have done something inappropriate with a young boy. Especially when nothing was ever done to make you feel like Hoffman’s character might have actually done it. You wondered if he could have, but you never really believe that he did. Without that, Streep’s character going on her own personal witch hunt by going after Hoffman’s priest seemed like just another busy-body.
If you like Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you won’t be terribly disappointed with this movie. They are both fun to watch in nearly everything they’re in. This movie just never seemed to really take hold of the moral issue it tries to raise. While it wasn’t a terrible movie, exactly, I’m certainly at a loss to explain how Doubt received 5 Academy Award nominations.
3 out of 5 Stars