We have all experienced it before, respected actor decides to take a turn in directing, even gets a noteworthy name or two in the cast, film is generally nondescript, bordering on disappointing. With A Little Chaos, said director is Alan Rickman. Dude was Hans in Die Hard, Snape in the Harry Potter movies. He stars in the film and managed to get an Oscar winner to boot. So let's peek under the hood, shall we?

The screenplay was written by Allison Deegan, who co-wrote with Jeremy Brock and Rickman. Rickman plays King Louis XIV, you know, the one from France. And does so with little in the way of efforted intonation, something that plagues many of the ensemble, who I'll mention in a minute. Louis enlists a landscaper named Andre Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts, The Drop) to do some work for him. After seeing her work, Andre decides to enlist Sabine (Kate Winslet, Labor Day) for assistance. Sabine is torn between friendship with the King after he becomes a widower and love with Andre, whose own wife freely cavorts with his knowledge.

On the micro level for a second, a problem with the lack of inflection when it comes to these actors playing French characters and then doing an accent occasionally that Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves would be disgusted by is that it indicates a general lack of attention to the work you are doing, and if the director is not going to care much about it, why should you? I mean, Stanley fricken' Tucci (The Hunger Games) plays Duke Philippe D'Orleans, and it's clear he gives zero craps about it, in action, inflection and general performance.

On the macro level, the apathy surrounding A Little Chaos comes through in a lot of aspects of the film. It is too long and Sabine dithers way too much about choices in which she has built very little emotional resonance in. The story almost plays Winslet as torn between the logical choice of Andre and the King, though both men have their share of loss, albeit admittedly in varying degrees.

Part of me even thinks that, period drama with Schoenaerts and a British actress, that someone somewhere decided to release this as counter programming with the Far From The Madding Crowd feature that got a little more attention and respect. Perhaps it is because it was a movie that actually cared about the story it was trying to tell, as opposed to presumably coming off as some sort of vanity project that could have been better than it was.

To be clear, A Little Chaos is not a completely bad movie. What I take issue with, more than the fact that it is not good, is that the lack of effort put in by just about everyone involved is noticeable enough to mention. Schoenaerts continues to do great work, but Winslet does not seem to know what she wants to do with Sabine, and Rickman could have little care about his role, on screen or off. And the latter is why A Little Chaos is not disappointing, It expects you should see it because of who is in it, but when they almost all do substandard work, they're not going to give you your money back.

The 2.40:1 high-definition transfer of the film looks excellent. Ellen Kuras, cinematographer for Michel Gondry films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, illustrates A A Little Chaos nicely, greens and reds look nice and have a multidimensional feel to them. Flesh tones are a little hard to discern because in another symptom of what's wrong with the movie, they go for the powdered faces for American and British actors playing French characters. My gripe aside, it is a solid transfer and well worth checking out.

DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround, which sounds not bad considering the relative lack of dynamic action over the course of the film. Dialogue does tend to fluctuate a little, but when it does get to exhibit some range, as when Winslet is caught in the middle of a storm or when some ground is blown up with some dynamite, there is a bit of low-end to fill out the sound stage nicely. It does not have a lot to do, but does it nicely.

Nothing, unless you want to count Ultraviolet and iTunes digital copies of the film..

There could have been some good turned in by those involved with A Little Chaos, but it comes off as an excuse to work with the desired cast without taking any time to, you know, tell a decent story. Technically the disc is good, and it is not a huge deal on the lack of any extras. But when Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet and Mattias Schoenaerts appear in a movie together, that the newest actor of the bunch does the best job is nice and all, but a sign of just how not good the movie is. Rent it for Schoenaerts' performance, if nothing else.