About Alex is mainly just two hours too many to spend with characters who aren't compelling and generally act like selfish jerks. Our title character is pushed to the background and probably has the least lines of anyone. It's almost hilarious how swept aside and incidental the character Alex is in a movie called "About Alex." One gets the impression that we're meant to feel bad for him, but he's still more of a plot device than a person with a complex, nuanced personality. Most of the film dwells on the ridiculous neuroses of the other characters, which lack authenticity or originality of any kind. Drama that would be better suited to a TV sitcom than a feature length movie. Yes, the fumbling discomfort of the characters as they try to deal with Alex's attempt is something we can all sympathize with, but this is the beginning and the end of my emotional participation in this story. I have a major weakness for quirky suicide movies, but it's so important for the audience to feel something for this to work at all as the basis for a movie. Suicide is a serious subject, which About Alex seems to grasp. Although the act itself is sensationalized, it is treated with some reverence. Looking at suicide through a bizarre filter can make it easier to break down, accept, understand, but I think a strong connection between the audience and the victim is key for this to work. Overall, About Alex is pseudo-philosophical, tepid and boring. It doesn't hit the right notes emotionally and it's simply not warm enough, intimate enough, close enough. A film with a similar premise, which although not perfect itself, comes nearer to accomplishing what About Alex seems to be striving for, is A Beautiful Now. My advice is to avoid About Alex like the plague, and check that out instead; at least A Beautiful Now is interesting.

This movie, About Alex, is such a copy/rip-off of The Big Chill, I honestly don't know how the Screen Writers Guild allows Jesse Zwick to pass this off as an original screenplay. Obviously, he changed the characters and dialog to update to the 21st century, but he has stolen outright so many elements from The Big Chill that there should at least be an acknowledgment, "Based on the Motion Picture..." like there are on other movies that rework original ideas for modern movies (e.g. The Evil Dead).

In The Big Chill, the character who commits suicide and inspires the reunion is Alex; in this version, there is also a suicidal character named Alex, though he is unsuccessful in his suicide. One of the characters in About Alex has a younger girlfriend not originally part of the group and she feels awkward around the others - there is a similar character in The Big Chill. Two of the characters hook up after many years, there is an obligatory dance sequence, a pot smoking scene, etc. All of this is straight out of The Big Chill.

At one point in About Alex, Aubrey Plaza says something to the effect of "This is like one of those movies in the 80s...". I've seen this same contrivance in other movies used as some sort of way to excuse the fact that the filmmakers have borrowed heavily from an earlier work, but personally I don't believe this is a way out from plagiarism. I know people like to quote, "plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery," but is is still plagiarism.

Maybe this would have been somewhat excusable if writer/director Zwick actually had something interesting to say and was able to formulate a movie that actually spoke to people. But instead, he just goes through the predictable motions of creating characters that are so redundant that they are now virtually stereotypes (the suicidal aspiring actor, the blocked writer, etc.) and having them speak a lot of trite "socially pertinent" conversation. I get the impression Zwick just made a list of all the so-called relevant issues of today's 20/30-somethings - e.g. technology, anti-depressants, lack of good pop music - and then planned his scenes accordingly. The end result is a script that is lazy and tepid and does nothing to stand out from all the other movies dealing with these same issues.

It hits all the right issues about modern isolation and the nature of friendship, but it hits on them only tangentially and without any depth. And it doesn't really use its theme to its advantage very well. If there's one very positive thing I can say about this movie it's that once a scene gets going it starts to really get going. And then the scene ends way too soon and we're left with a sense of incompleteness. It's as if the director didn't want the players to do too much "acting" to get in the way.

The set-up is weakly explained, the relationship dynamics are barely believable, and the resolution is too neatly tied up. But if you like some of the actors, it will be a pleasant if not terribly worthwhile experience. Overall, it was a missed opportunity to explore how technological progress has affected how we make and sustain friendships in a post-Big Chill world.