I am so ambivalent about this movie..... did I really like it or did I feel manipulated? Was it a great George Clooney performance or not? The mainstream reviewers and Oscar nominators (obviously) think the movie was great. I have a certain friend who I couldn't drag to see this movie under pain of death (you know who you are, as do certain other friends). As I watched, I kept thinking about George's performance. Not about the movie. The movie/story was secondary. This does not a great movie make. For me, at least.
I wish I could have enjoyed the movie more. I wanted to. I love George Clooney for his "offbeat characters". He's great as Danny Ocean, Lyn Cassady (Men Who Stare at Goats), Michael Clayton, Harry Pfarrer (Burn After Reading) as well as Everett in Oh Brother Where Art Thou (one of my all time favorite movies and best sound tracks of all time).
Spoilers Ahead!
The story centers on a man (Matt King) who has ignored his family for the sake of his career/wealth building. He wakes up when his wife suffers a boating accident. At this point he needs to become the primary parent as his wife is in a coma and it becomes apparent that she will never wake up. He raves at her that he's "the back up parent". This is, for me at least, a very strange concept. I have no idea what a back-up parent is. You are a parent or you are not. You are in your childrens' lives or not. Why else would you have children? I could go on and on about this, but I'll stop. You really don't need to read my screed about all this.... truly. Plus, I'm getting way off topic here.
So, we have a story about a man whose idea of his family is being shattered upon learning the circumstances of his wife's boating accident. It is confirmed when his older daughter tells him that she's known of her mother's infidelity for months (and, by the way, she was with the "other man" when the accident happened. Meanwhile, this older daughter refuses to go anywhere with her father and younger sister without her friend Sid. It turns out that Sid has lost a parent himself, but this isn't revealed until much later. Oh, and Matt King's extended family owns the last major tract of pristine land in Hawaii and for some reason they have to make a decision about selling it due to a new law. The family descends from early missionaries and Hawaiian Royalty. Why they can't sell the land to the state of Hawaii for a nice amount of change to keep the land pristine is beyond me but again, this baffles me. Oh, yeah, it's a movie.
A major part of the movie is Matt King looking for the man with whom his wife was having an affair in order to tell him that she was to be taken off life support. It is obvious that he wants a confrontation about all this.
The movie ends nicely, as it should, given all that happens. It is not my favorite movie of the year. It certainly not my choice for the Best Movie of the Year.
I wish I could have enjoyed the movie more. I wanted to. I love George Clooney for his "offbeat characters". He's great as Danny Ocean, Lyn Cassady (Men Who Stare at Goats), Michael Clayton, Harry Pfarrer (Burn After Reading) as well as Everett in Oh Brother Where Art Thou (one of my all time favorite movies and best sound tracks of all time).
Spoilers Ahead!
The story centers on a man (Matt King) who has ignored his family for the sake of his career/wealth building. He wakes up when his wife suffers a boating accident. At this point he needs to become the primary parent as his wife is in a coma and it becomes apparent that she will never wake up. He raves at her that he's "the back up parent". This is, for me at least, a very strange concept. I have no idea what a back-up parent is. You are a parent or you are not. You are in your childrens' lives or not. Why else would you have children? I could go on and on about this, but I'll stop. You really don't need to read my screed about all this.... truly. Plus, I'm getting way off topic here.
So, we have a story about a man whose idea of his family is being shattered upon learning the circumstances of his wife's boating accident. It is confirmed when his older daughter tells him that she's known of her mother's infidelity for months (and, by the way, she was with the "other man" when the accident happened. Meanwhile, this older daughter refuses to go anywhere with her father and younger sister without her friend Sid. It turns out that Sid has lost a parent himself, but this isn't revealed until much later. Oh, and Matt King's extended family owns the last major tract of pristine land in Hawaii and for some reason they have to make a decision about selling it due to a new law. The family descends from early missionaries and Hawaiian Royalty. Why they can't sell the land to the state of Hawaii for a nice amount of change to keep the land pristine is beyond me but again, this baffles me. Oh, yeah, it's a movie.
A major part of the movie is Matt King looking for the man with whom his wife was having an affair in order to tell him that she was to be taken off life support. It is obvious that he wants a confrontation about all this.
The movie ends nicely, as it should, given all that happens. It is not my favorite movie of the year. It certainly not my choice for the Best Movie of the Year.
I, too, WANTED to like this movie. The actors did the best they could with a great idea and mediocre script. If we don't go deep into a character, at least we could laugh at the reflection of ourselves in them. In the end, it seemed that the script had lost many opportunities to turn a chuckle into a laugh. Not a waste of $9 and popcorn, but not a Best Movie.
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