Days of Wine and Roses

Directed by Blake Edwards, Days of Wine and Roses follows Jack Lemmon’s Joe and Lee Remick’s Kirsten as they struggle to cope with alcoholism over the course of their rocky relationship. Filmmaker Edwards, armed with JP Miller’s screenplay, delivers a well-acted yet terminally overlong drama that’s never quite able to pack the potent punch one might’ve anticipated, as the meandering (and sporadically repetitious) narrative prevents the viewer from wholeheartedly connecting to the central characters’ progressively downbeat plight – with the distressingly uneventful first half only succeeding, for the most part, as a showcase for Lemmon and Remick’s admittedly superb efforts. There’s little doubt, then, that Days of Wine and Roses improves slightly as it progresses into a midsection that boasts much-needed dramatic heft, and although the narrative suffers from a handful of less-than-subtle stretches (eg the movie sporadically feels like an Alcoholics Anonymous infomercial), the picture concludes on an impressively grim note that does, in the final analysis, cement its place as a just-decent-enough endeavor that could’ve benefited from a much shorter running time.

**1/2 out of ****

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