Summary
- The Burning Plain and Serena are underrated Jennifer Lawrence films with low box office returns.
- The Burning Plain represents the starting point of Lawrence’s career, predating her major hits.
- Serena, released during Lawrence’s peak movie star era, received poor reviews at the time.
Jennifer Lawrence has starred in sme major hits across her career, from The Hunger Games to X-Men, with Oscar winning dramatic roles in between. But, as with any star, she also has a few misses in her filmography. In terms of box office returns, The Burning Plain and Serena would be two of the most notable.
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Both have just been added to Amazon Prime, meaning any Jennifer Lawrence fans looking to unearth some hidden gems are in luck. Both movies only grossed around $5 million from budgets of around $20 million, but they both represent very different stages in Lawrence’s career.
Why Jennifer Lawrence Fans Should Watch The Burning Plain And Serena
The Burning Plain was a not a box office bomb, at least not in the way we think of them pertaining to major stars like Jennifer Lawerence. It was only her third role in film, and given her debut in Garden Party is blink and you’ll miss it, it’s really her second, after Poker House. Everything would change with her fourth, 2010’s Winter’s Bone that saw her nominated for an Oscar (the then-second youngest in Best Actress ever), but during The Burning Plain she was just another actor trying to make it.
Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger are the big names of the project, but it was always viewed as more of passion endeavour, with Guillermo Arriaga making his directorial debut after a decade of screenwriting that saw him win, amongst other things, Best Screenplay at Cannes. It marks the starting point of Lawrence’s career, predating Winter’s Bone that many fans would use as a jumping off point.
Serena, on the other hand, came out in 2014. By that point, she had won an Academy Award and been nominated twice further (winning for Silver Linings Playbook and being nominated for Winter’s Bone and American Hustle). The following year, she would be nominated a fourth time for Joy. She had also been in two Hunger Games movies at that point and two X-Men films, with Mockingjay Part 1 releasing just a few months after Serena.
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Put simply, it was a film she made when she was the biggest movie star in the wold. And bluntly, the reviews were not good. The movie stands at 17 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with the audience score of 24 percent. One critic even described it as “unwatchable”, while one of the top reviews on Letterboxd, where it has a 2.4/5 asks “have you ever wanted to punch a movie in the face”.
Also starring Bradley Cooper whoo enjoyed a similar (if Oscar-less) career arc after starring in Silver Linings Playbook with Lawrence, it represents Lawrence’s continued willingness to work on dramatic, more indie-sized projects that ask her to act, not just show up and be famous. It’s this confidence that saw her return from her self-imposed career break and throw herself straight into the slow and contemplative Causeway. Fans looking to experience the breadth of Lawrence’s career should make Serena a necessary stop along the way.
Amazon Prime
- notable movies
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Palm Springs, Road House, Coming 2 America