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Sep. 21st, 2014 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretSo um... This Is Where I Leave You, which I declared sight un-seen I would request for Yuletide? I saw it today.
Let us first state that it is not a very good movie.
That said, it is a movie about a bunch of goyim sitting shiva for their atheist father because their Christian mother guilted them into it. It has Ben Schwartz (Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation) as a Rabbi. It has fun performances from Jason Bateman and Tina Fey and Kathryn Hahn and Abigail Spencer and Dax Shepard, actors I've enjoyed for ages. It has a marvelous performance from Jane Fonda as the family matriarch. It has goofy synagogue humor... the scene where they're getting high in a Hebrew school classroom had marvelously accurate set dressing.
In short, even though it's not a very good movie, I was destined to enjoy it regardless of that fact.
This Is Where I Leave You seems like it ought to be a movie extracting comedy from the tension of a dysfunctional family, but the Altmans don't really seem like a very dysfunctional family. They don't seem like a very happy family, a lot of the time, but they pretty much do get along. The parents showed affection for their children growing up. The kids supported each other and had each others' backs. At first, I found this a bit surprising but rather enjoyable, that the comedy was coming from a gentler place than I'd expected. I really liked the Altmans and I really liked the way they stuck together even when they disapproved of each other.
Then we got the kind of classic family dysfunction scenes you expect from a film like this, and... they bothered me. Paul's wife sneaking into the basement to seduce her brother-in-law Judd didn't seem like an appropriately raunchy comic moment, an essential 'look at how fucked up this family is' moment. It just seemed sad and bleak and pathetic. Judd recruiting some frat boys to tip his cuckold's car might have been a triumphant if childish moment, but following it up with the cuckold announcing his intention of abandoning Judd's pregnant ex-wife took any air out the triumph. Because the family was not really all that dysfunctional to begin with, because the film began with gentle family humor instead of over-the-top clashes of personality, the 'comedy' of watching shiva force them to be too close together for a week was the 'comedy' of watching a family tear itself apart. When Fonda's matriarch character admitted that she had faked her husband's request for them to sit shiva, her son Philip objected that her ploy had screwed up his relationship with his fiancee- with some justification, I would say.
So am I still going to request fic for Yuletide now that I've seen it? Yes, I think I probably am. Like I said, I liked the Altmans a lot and I loved Rabbi Jean-Ralphio, and I would be happy to see fic for either or both of those things. Even though I was disappointed by the movie, it had a lot of components that I enjoyed and would like to see expanded upon. And I'm amused by the idea of requesting a thing for Yuletide that I'd decided sight-unseen, because I am a bad person.
Let us first state that it is not a very good movie.
That said, it is a movie about a bunch of goyim sitting shiva for their atheist father because their Christian mother guilted them into it. It has Ben Schwartz (Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation) as a Rabbi. It has fun performances from Jason Bateman and Tina Fey and Kathryn Hahn and Abigail Spencer and Dax Shepard, actors I've enjoyed for ages. It has a marvelous performance from Jane Fonda as the family matriarch. It has goofy synagogue humor... the scene where they're getting high in a Hebrew school classroom had marvelously accurate set dressing.
In short, even though it's not a very good movie, I was destined to enjoy it regardless of that fact.
This Is Where I Leave You seems like it ought to be a movie extracting comedy from the tension of a dysfunctional family, but the Altmans don't really seem like a very dysfunctional family. They don't seem like a very happy family, a lot of the time, but they pretty much do get along. The parents showed affection for their children growing up. The kids supported each other and had each others' backs. At first, I found this a bit surprising but rather enjoyable, that the comedy was coming from a gentler place than I'd expected. I really liked the Altmans and I really liked the way they stuck together even when they disapproved of each other.
Then we got the kind of classic family dysfunction scenes you expect from a film like this, and... they bothered me. Paul's wife sneaking into the basement to seduce her brother-in-law Judd didn't seem like an appropriately raunchy comic moment, an essential 'look at how fucked up this family is' moment. It just seemed sad and bleak and pathetic. Judd recruiting some frat boys to tip his cuckold's car might have been a triumphant if childish moment, but following it up with the cuckold announcing his intention of abandoning Judd's pregnant ex-wife took any air out the triumph. Because the family was not really all that dysfunctional to begin with, because the film began with gentle family humor instead of over-the-top clashes of personality, the 'comedy' of watching shiva force them to be too close together for a week was the 'comedy' of watching a family tear itself apart. When Fonda's matriarch character admitted that she had faked her husband's request for them to sit shiva, her son Philip objected that her ploy had screwed up his relationship with his fiancee- with some justification, I would say.
So am I still going to request fic for Yuletide now that I've seen it? Yes, I think I probably am. Like I said, I liked the Altmans a lot and I loved Rabbi Jean-Ralphio, and I would be happy to see fic for either or both of those things. Even though I was disappointed by the movie, it had a lot of components that I enjoyed and would like to see expanded upon. And I'm amused by the idea of requesting a thing for Yuletide that I'd decided sight-unseen, because I am a bad person.