Catfish is an odd name for a film and even odder for one about three men’s journey to get to the bottom of a mystery surrounding an 8-year-old painter, her beautiful mother, and even-more-beautiful sister. The men are Nev Schulman, his brother Ariel, and their friend, Henry Joost.

The three live together in New York where Nev makes his living as a photographer. One day a package arrives for Nev from Ishpeming, Michigan. In it is a painting of one of his photos, done by the 8-year-old Abby Pierce. Several other paintings follow while Nev and Abby strike up an acquaintance on Facebook.

Soon after he becomes friends with Abby’s mother Angela and her half-sister Megan. Nev eventually speaks to Angela and the oddly-deep-voiced Megan on the phone, but every time he calls, Abby always seems to be out.

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I did you a favor and refrained  from making a pun out of the film’s title in my headline, though I had to physically restrain myself from doing so. From acting to editing, to continuity and dialogue, this film was an awful mess.

I’ve grown to  enjoy and look forward to comic book adaptations over the last year. Watchmen and Kick-Ass were some of my favorite films of the last twelve months, so I went into The Losers (based on a comic by Andy  Diggle) with an open mind and high expectations.

Things went swimmingly well  for the first five minutes  or so, but then the movie had its first action sequence, and director David Sylvain embarks on a torrid love affair with ill-advised editing.  He loves slow-motion. He loves the fast edit. He loves the stop/go/stop again editing. Most of all, he just loves to edit the holy living crap out of any scene he can get his hands on. As long as the camera is moving erratically, he is like a kid in a candy shop, and it ruins the movie.

The editing tricks become the primary focus of the movie, and once you start noticing them, they will plaque you incessantly until the conclusion of the film. There is just no need for a lot of it.  For instance, there is a kinda-sorta hot love scene between Zoe Saldana and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

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