Someone here had their finger on the pulse, as all the right stylistic and narrative choices seem to have been made. Which is good or bad depending on your expectations. Everything from the grit film stock and hyper bland color palette (dull becomes interesting) to the continual string of acoustic folk numbers. We also get the smarmy attitudes flaring between parents and their kids, kids understandably beginning to crack in their parents' broken image. Self denial and transference. Role reversals. The main character's inner crises get outwardly expressed with transportation related woes (I've noticed this in a lot of films lately).
So these recent "indie" family dramadies, I'm sorry to report, are beginning to look and smell the same. Characters are introduced as if they are already beyond hope. Yet things still get worse and then get better, and we can see it coming if we've already watched a couple of these. People are crude and selfish and blunt, and this is supposed to add up to "real". Still seems cartoony to me, only the lines are drawn deliberately crooked.
It's like they try too hard to look and feel like something closer to real suburban life than life on a screen. But because each scene and story arc is on beat, it defeats itself. Underneath it all, this art house release is still movieland as much as the multiplex release. Smarty, but not smart.
I prefer stronger visionaries, riskier artists, even if that means more warts and less movie charm.
In spite of all that, I'm okay with charm and there is charm - The way Ellen Page's eyebrows dance around the bottom of her long forehead is precious. Even when she's, well, always cutting into others.
And Dennis Quaid is, I guess trying on a different role? Here he goes for the irony in pretending to know. He writes about knowing and criticism of theories of knowledge (epistemology). His book title, You Can't Read, was not really his idea and thus it was probably meant to describe himself. He cannot read people. Hiding behind one's book knowledge is funny, because it ends up revealing to others exactly what it tries to obscure.
Sarah Jessica Parker generally annoys but her character had a couple of great moments. She pulls off the I'm-telling-you-something-is-wrong-without-telling-you bit that women can be sooo good at. It had charm because I cringed, knowing that indirect form of communication, the female's own trademark.
So these recent "indie" family dramadies, I'm sorry to report, are beginning to look and smell the same. Characters are introduced as if they are already beyond hope. Yet things still get worse and then get better, and we can see it coming if we've already watched a couple of these. People are crude and selfish and blunt, and this is supposed to add up to "real". Still seems cartoony to me, only the lines are drawn deliberately crooked.
It's like they try too hard to look and feel like something closer to real suburban life than life on a screen. But because each scene and story arc is on beat, it defeats itself. Underneath it all, this art house release is still movieland as much as the multiplex release. Smarty, but not smart.
I prefer stronger visionaries, riskier artists, even if that means more warts and less movie charm.
In spite of all that, I'm okay with charm and there is charm - The way Ellen Page's eyebrows dance around the bottom of her long forehead is precious. Even when she's, well, always cutting into others.
And Dennis Quaid is, I guess trying on a different role? Here he goes for the irony in pretending to know. He writes about knowing and criticism of theories of knowledge (epistemology). His book title, You Can't Read, was not really his idea and thus it was probably meant to describe himself. He cannot read people. Hiding behind one's book knowledge is funny, because it ends up revealing to others exactly what it tries to obscure.
Sarah Jessica Parker generally annoys but her character had a couple of great moments. She pulls off the I'm-telling-you-something-is-wrong-without-telling-you bit that women can be sooo good at. It had charm because I cringed, knowing that indirect form of communication, the female's own trademark.
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