Even with the low rating and not so good reviews, the cast for 'Bayou Caviar' seemed too good to resist (Cuba Gooding Jr, Famke Janssen and Richard Dreyfuss, interesting too to see how 'American Idol's' Katharine McPhee would fare in her latest acting endeavour) and it sounded like it would be a somewhat halfway serviceable if not particularly original film.
Despite being severely let down and not finding it a good film at all, there are far worse films out there than 'Bayou Caviar'. It didn't strike me as an irredeemably bad film, then again this is coming from somebody who tries to not consider any film that (that is not to say they don't exist, far from it) and tries to see the good in everything they see. There are however a lot of faults in 'Bayou Caviar' and there is a constant feeling of Cuba Gooding Jr (starring, writing and directing) biting off more than he could chew and running before he could walk, really struggling to make any of them good on their own.
One thing that 'Bayou Caviar' has in its favour is the scenery, which is lovely.
Generally found the production values overall acceptable actually, with a nice gritty style to some of the photography in places.
Everything else, not so lovely or acceptable. Inexperience shows badly in Gooding Jr's direction, which has very little momentum or flavour and while there is nothing cheap here as such it all feels bland. At best the music is forgettable and there are instances of choppiness in the editing. The cast elsewhere individually have shown they can be good, they just have very little to work with here in 'Bayou Caviar' and they don't seem very engaged.
Not that they can be blamed in this respect though. None of the characters are developed well at all, with very little learnt about them or their motivations, and the way they behave frustrates and irritates to an intelligence insulting degree. 'Bayou Caviar' is full of inane dialogue that one cannot in any way take seriously, no matter how hard they try, and the story feels incoherently cobbled together, very little makes sense and it drags hard from all the numerous going nowhere stretches.
On the whole, very bad film but not irredeemable. 2/10 Bethany Cox
