Robert Benton directed the 1979 best picture winner Kramer vs. Kramer. After viewing Feast of Love, that is hard to believe. Working from an overly-meditative and underdeveloped script by Allison Burnett, Benton delivers a movie so sappy and bland that one wonders if this wasn't originally planned for a primetime release on the Lifetime Network (where it probably would have done quite well).
I would summarize the plot here if it were intelligible and if I thought it served a purpose. The point of a plot is usually to tell some story (hopefully an interesting one, though not always as is the case here) at the end of which characters learn something or are changed in some way. Burnett's script does not seem too concerned with providing its characters with motivations or real thoughts, and their character arcs flatline from the beginning. But, it's okay because we never really learn who these people are anyway, and the ones we do learn about we do not like. So, we do not care.
Morgan Freeman phones it in playing (for a change) the wise, world weary mentor to a group of people with problems (see The Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby). Greg Kinnear does the best he can with what he's given to work (and it ain't much). This is basically true of the whole cast: talented people playing an ensemble of uninteresting and occasionally downright annoying stock characters who are put in a series of increasingly ludicrous situations.
The movie has no redeeming qualities, and for their own sakes, I hope everyone involved got paid upfront.
See it?
Only if the alternative is bamboo slivers under the fingernails, and even then, weigh your options.
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