If there's too much extraneous description the genuinely disturbing turns into bathos

In the Guardian, Adrian Searle makes a case for Gregory Crewdson's work suffering from a bout of too-muchness: "But Crewdson tries to turn the fact that much of what is going on in his photographs is a bit unbelievable into uncanniness. In some circumstances we can all be suckers for detail, but if there's too much extraneous description the genuinely disturbing turns into bathos. Beneath the Roses suffers from a surfeit of American realism and production values: there are too many toys, too many set dressers, hair people, rain and fog guys - and too many chances to tweak the picture later, which doesn't help. The artificially assisted daylight, the crepuscular, pink-hued skies, the smoke-machine mists and the fire department rain are too much. It all feels too concocted for its own good. I feel the same about some of Vancouver-based artist Jeff Wall's manipulated and staged images. Rather than 20 images (although Crewdson threw out as many again in post-production), I think 5 or 6 would have had more effect."