August: Osage County looks like a play. It feels like a play. It smells like a play. Tracy Letts adapted his own work which means that some of the “action” involves people standing outside instead of standing inside. Well, hey, it’s not Iron Man; why battle evil abroad when it exists in pure form in your own house talkin’ smack about every family member.
I had honestly forgotten what it’s like to loathe a Meryl Streep character. It happens from time-to-time. Ohhhhhhh, yeah, *NOW* I remember. Hmmmmm, please, please, PLEASE SHUT UP! Violet (Streep) is the pill-poppin’ matriarch of an Oklahoma family in which I challenge you to find the not-screwed-up one. The extended family reunites over the disappearance/suicide of Violet’s husband Bev (Sam Shepard) which nobody seems to find all that unreasonable. i.e. they all know Violet. You can’t really describe August: Osage 
County without describing Violet – she’s ornery, bitter, mean and direct. She doesn’t pussyfoot issues; she’s confrontational and aggressive. She floats in and out of lucidity due to her drug habit (she tosses tablets like a six-year-old with Sweet Tarts at a Disney matinee double-feature); and these are the times you enjoy her company the best. She’s the kind of person for whom the word “schadenfreude” was invented.
Violet represents an age tolerance test — are you wizened enough to forgive her behavior and blame it on the pills? Does she get a pass because she’s elderly and a drug addict? For me — no. I feel that the drug abuse only reinforces, rather than excuses, her awful. And she is awful.
There isn’t a plot to August; it’s a story about how Violet relates to her three daughters: the floosy (Juliette Lewis), the wallflower (Julianne Nicholson) and Violet-in-training (Julia Roberts). Julia has the toughest role, constantly caught within the internal battle between what Violet would do and what a human would do. Among the three, she’s the only one to reproduce and is in the process of losing her husband (Ewan McGregor). The lesson here is understanding multi-generational bickering — and one day, God willing, her daughter Jean will follow the same path.
I think you can tell a great deal about a family, fictional or otherwise, by how it treats the coming-of-age rebel. Jean (Abigail Breslin) exhibits her individuality at the dinner (?) Lunch? Linner? Brunch? table. Just what meal are we having here? Anyway, Jean refuses the pork products offered because she’s a vegetarian. Why? When you eat meat, you’re “ingesting an animal’s fear.” (Animals that 
know they’re being slaughtered or hunted release chemicals associated with fear before they die). Ok, it’s not the soundest reason for being a vegetarian, but there are worse. As adults and child-bearers, we may disagree and know several ways to handle this particular situation. The worst one continues to be: laugh at the teen and demonstrate that his/her POV has no value whatsoever. This is not right-of-passage material. And yet, with one show of solidarity in ostracizing and humiliating the only third generation member present, you have guaranteed the continuity of horrible — one day she will become Violet as well. Congrats, assholes.
This is a vehicle for nominations and little more. Chris Cooper, for comic relief, does deliver the very worst grace in modern history, which is a nice touch. August:Osage County is watchable, but not especially pleasant or satisfying. Only a sadist would see this film twice, or somebody looking for tips on how to make relatives leave.
♪Well, Lord, I got to raise a fuss, Lord I got to raise a holler
Gonna score a nomination with a speech that’s hard to swoller
Nobody likes what I do, but that’s hardly the point
You want to get a laugh, dear, you’ll have to roll a joint
Sometimes I wonder if I drunk up all the booze
Cause there ain’t no cure for the OsageCo blues♫
Rated R, 121 Minutes
D: John Wells
W: Tracy Letts
Genre: Family reunion from Hell
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The people who live to see Meryl Streep act … and act … and act some more
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Closeted dysfunctional family members
♪Parody inspired by “Summertime Blues”
