The new film “Carnage” adapts the Tony Award-winning play, but it comes up short despite its pedigree. Neil Rosen filed the following review.

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Despite a Tony Award for Best Play on Broadway in 2009, I was never a big fan of “God Of Carnage.” I thought it was thin and mediocre. Well, now it's a movie with an all-star cast, and the name has been changed to simply “Carnage.”

After two kids have a playground fight, with one of the boys losing two teeth, the parents of these children get together to discuss the matter in a civilized fashion. Things start out quite cordially, with both sides being ultra polite and quite accommodating.

But soon, things start to degenerate in an upscale New York apartment. The true feelings of all four of these people are revealed. So are the problems in their marriages, and eventually things escalate into a no holds barred verbal assault.

Director Roman Polanski never opens up the movie. On stage, all the action took place in one apartment. The movie stays there, too, and it's usually problematic to do that in a film. In order for it to work, the entirely dialogue-driven material has to be razor sharp, and it's not.

The escalation of the characters’ tempers, as they start to behave like the children they're discussing, is supposed to play out comically, but the material by playwright Yasmina Reza, who also wrote the film's screenplay, never got me there on stage or in the movie. It's not that funny, and the characters’ actions aren't that revelatory.

It's just too far farfetched and unrealistic. You wonder why the other couple just doesn't leave.

I preferred John C. Reilly's performance to James Gandolfini, who did it on stage. Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet are perfunctory here, while Jodie Foster, in a rare disappointing performance, overacts. She's over the top, and by the end, unconvincing.

Overall, it's not really the actors or the director who are to blame. It's the lousy material. The saving grace is that it's only 80 minutes. But even that felt too long.

Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating: 1.5 Apples