I saw this a few days ago, and I'm just now starting to put it all together and remember the scenes and actually understand the 3 hour story. Well done.
shareAgreed!
shareSome of its most vivid moments do get under your skin, in that you still remember certain parts of it - especially their long car rides where you felt like you were a passenger and part of the crew. It's like John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) where you felt cramped inside that carriage, but also felt like an even closer participant. Perhaps that was what the director was going for.
There's some good things in the film and some good filmmaking. I still think it's overlong, and there were many redundant scenes and even odd character inconsistencies. Star would be shown as empathetic in one scene, but be ditzy, immature and rude in another (like that mom offering her a glass of water). I think the problem here was that there was too much improvisation, and the filmmaker was not able to patch up these contradictions, and just left it as is, hoping we'd classify it under "the complexities of human nature" even though it doesn't really play that way in the film.
Star's actress was okay (she wasn't the first choice and has never acted before) and Shia was sort of an irritating presence to me and his outbursts in the film were overdone. I actually thought the blonde guy who never wore a shirt was more charismatic and funnier to watch than Shia. Maybe he should've been the main guy.