“Jack Goes Boating” is boring. There, I said it.

Critics are generally expected to be more pretentious, and to purposefully find films interesting that put “normal people” to sleep.

But the fact of the matter is that there’s a major difference between subtlety and flat-out plodding.

I know “Jack Goes Boating” is harboring under the notion that it’s subtle, and while a fair amount of critics will also praise it for it’s subtlety, at the end of the day I thought all this film did was plod along, one boring scene after another.

The movie stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also directed the film, as Jack, a limo driver whose life has fallen into a static pattern. Jack’s friend Clyde, played by John Ortiz, is also at a point in his life where he seems unable to change, although Clyde is taking business classes between driving his limo, and is in at least some way trying to improve his situation.

He’s pushed to do this by his wife, Lucy, played by Daphne Rubin-Vega. However Jack becomes more motivated to change once Clyde and Lucy introduce him to Lucy’s coworker, Connie, played by Amy Ryan.

The rest of the movie deals with Jack and Lucy’s struggle to grow together, all while watching Clyde and Lucy’s relationship fall apart. Most of it is all very delicate and intimate, probably with the intention of showing us how relationships are complicated, and take time and patience.

This is true, however at the end of the film I wasn’t really convinced that (spoiler alert, although I’m probably doing you a favor) Jack and Connie really loved each other. It’s always hard to predict the way things will turn out, especially when it comes to love.

However, most of the time Jack and Connie just seemed like two broken people who grabbed on to each other because that was all they could do. As for Clyde and Lucy, it was somewhat interesting to see how Clyde wasn’t able to see the (supposed) love of Jack and Connie bloom while his love with Lucy wilted.

But despite a satisfying ending, the film just wasn’t worth it. Amy Ryan is excellent, like usual, playing the quirky and melancholy Connie, and Hoffman does a fine job in the director’s chair, showing some real visual creativity. He’s probably perfectly capable of doing more intimate character dramas in the future (hopefully ones better than this.)

But at the end of the day, “Jack Goes Boating” just doesn’t work on the screen. Does it work better on stage, where it was originally done (with much of the same cast, I might add)?

It’s quite probable since there’s often a certain quality about small stories with few people that work better when left on the stage.

I certainly hope “Jack Goes Boating” worked better in the theater than it did on film, because if not, this story will have successfully been boring in two mediums.