The stripped-down production looks more like a play than a movie, but all the actors do a decent job with a script which turns increasingly preposterous at every turn.
The Tenants (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 19
Fresh: 6
Rotten:13
Average Rating: 4.8/10
Rated: R [See Full Rating] pervasive language, some violence, sexual content and drug use
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Feb 3, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: THE TENANTS is based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-Winning author Bernard Malamud, whose other adapted works into film include THE FIXER and THE NATURAL. A socio-political piece set in an... THE TENANTS is based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-Winning author Bernard Malamud, whose other adapted works into film include THE FIXER and THE NATURAL. A socio-political piece set in an abandoned New York apartment building in the early 1970s, It is the story of a Jewish novelist, Harry Lesser, struggling to complete his latest work, and his antagonistic relationship with a black writer who moves in down the hall. The film stars Dylan McDermott, Snoop Dogg, Rose Byrne and Seymour Cassel and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, 2005. THE TENANTS is the story of two writers, the Lesser, Jewish-American, and Willie, African-American. The setting is an abandoned New York tenement in 1972. The last remaining tenant, Lesser works on his novel about the possibility of love. He befriends Willie, an illegal squatter, in the building and tries to help him with his writing. Their first argument occurs when Lesser criticizes Willie's immature and "black" writing style. Lesser meets Willie's white girlfriend Irene. The two fall in love and Irene leaves Willie. In revenge, Willie burns the only manuscript of Lesser's novel that has taken almost ten years to write. There is then a climactic life-and-death struggle, carried out with raw violence, between Lesser and Willie. As our story ends, in the words of Malamud, "Each, thought the writer, feels the other's anguish" is the last line of Lesser's novel. And the meaning is clear - communication and cooperation between the races has failed. --© Official Site [More]
Starring: Dylan McDermott, Snoop Dogg, Rose Byrne, Niki J. Crawford
Starring: Dylan McDermott, Snoop Dogg, Rose Byrne, Niki J. Crawford, Aldis Hodge
Director: Danny Green
Director: Danny Green
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Reviews for The Tenants
The Tenants ranges from one-set character piece to race-centric speech-making to Cinemax style bedroom dealings... Well, at least it's not boring.
Alternately tedious and bombastic, the film never achieves a consistent tone, and the characters and situations, while seemingly played on a realistic level, are neither remotely credible nor satisfyingly surreal.
...a good try from a first-time director that never quite hits the mark.
[Snoop] and McDermot have a weird chemistry together and fascinating to watch.
Danny Green's adaptation of Bernard Malamud's earnest 1971 novel about art and the clash between black and white feels about as anachronistic as the New York City rents cited in the film.
Snoop Dogg and Bernard Malamud don't often pop up in the same sentence, but they make an effective combination in a quiet little indie called The Tenants.
Middle-class Jewish liberal Lesser befriends semi-homeless African-American Spearmint, and from the moment their tenuous relationship begins, you know there's going to be trouble.
This film version of 'The Tenants'is a disservice to author Bernard Malamud as well as to the audience.
The message about race relations in America conveyed by this choppy and psychologically cauterized screen adaptation of Bernard Malamud's 1971 novel is dire.
The stage is set for a full-scale racial conflict, but neither actor is really up to the task.
There's something about the no-exit, zero-sum logic of the film's rivalry that makes this dingy, grim little indie hard to look away from.
For a hip-hop icon defined by his own cartoonish gangsta-pimp persona, Snoop Dogg nonetheless turns out to be the most genuine presence in The Tenants.
[The Tenants] keeps grimly glued to its one-note premise, relieved by nary a glimmer of humor, surprise or personality.
Accurately and passionately portrays the animosity between an African-American writer and his Jewish counterpart.
A bleakly funny, quietly harrowing exploration of the confluence of race, art, and privilege in pre-gentrification Brooklyn.
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