Fuckin A. Not sure what the haters are all about with this. This could be Apatow’s Reds. Ambitious, confessional, messy as fuck, sincere and direct in a way that no $60 million Adam Sandler flick has any right to be--not to mention paced with the digressive, unhurried rhythm of a motherfucking Eric Rohmer movie--and with a ballsy 2nd gear shift that rivals both Roller Boogie & L’Avventura, this is the kind of movie James L. Brooks has been trying to nail his whole career.
I've kind of been burned out on the Apatow-Rogen -esque humor that's been shoved down our throats the past few years, but an hour into this movie I felt the same way...It was working. We had a classic comedy with moments of sincerity that probably should have been wrapped up in a nice 90 minute package. Instead, I walked out of the theater feeling the same way I did after seeing "King Kong." That is, I liked it for about an hour, and then the story train derails and the movie comes to a dead halt for ANOTHER hour, thereby losing the viewer and making it impossible to get reinvested by the end of the two and a half hour mess. I felt it tried way too hard to be something inspiring and thought provoking but, for me it absolutely did not work.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt about it this movie is not a nice 90 minute package, it’s messy for sure, but not by accident. It’s messy in the way that the great character-based films from the 70’s were messy. Even the rom-coms from that era—Unmarried Woman, Blume in Love, Minnie & Moskowitz—took their cues not from plot points and midpoints and Syd Field’s iron-clad principles for how movies work, but were instead steered by the impulses and ill-advised whims of their flawed characters.
ReplyDeleteThough because it’s not a formula therefore it’s more of a gamble, something that works only if you’re willing to follow the characters wherever they go, including directions the characters may not anticipate themselves. And I could see how if you’re already kind of burned out on these guys, you’re definitely not going to want to hang out with them for 2 and a half hours whatever the case.