Thursday, November 03, 2005

Reflections on the Night Before

It's official. I'm a certifiable shut-in.

I drove downtown to find Jer as it was getting dark and the rain was coming down, and my wipers were performing at less than their maximum efficiency. I was a gigantic ball of stress in the slow lane, peering through the headlights at the street signs, hoping that I didn't have a huge blind spot at my side, and praying I wouldn't hit anybody. For the record, I'm not that dismal a driver, I just wasn't handling the traffic well. Or the leaving of the apartment.

After a few mis-turns, I found the vicinity of Jer and made him come to me. We navigated our way through the hilly streets and I only spun my tires out a few times. After a few more windy, hilly, back streets, we found a pay lot, dropped off the car, walked back to the theater and got in line an hour early. Jer went back to the car to get the umbrella, because by now it was coming down pretty good.

The rain finally stopped and I'd remembered gloves so I warmed up some. We found decent seats and they had adequate facilities inside, and overall it was a cute theater, a good experience.

The movie, "The Squid and the Whale," was okay. It was pretty quirky, which I'm all for, and it was effective in that I cared about what happened to the characters and didn't look at my watch once. However, I have a couple of comments. First, the women in the story were not developed at all. The mother was practically a broken record of adulterous behavior. The one chance she had to explain herself to her eldest son, she chose to tell him about yet another affair. It's too bad because Laura Linney is a terrific actress and she didn't get any meaty lines at all. Mostly she gets to stand around and look concerned and say things like, "Honeys..." or half-cry/laugh and look defeated.

The younger brother storyline didn't hold any interest for me. Yeah I get it. Both kids are screwed up in their perceptions of sexuality. Whatever.

And the Dad's storyline reminded me of Wonder Boys. I kept forgetting that Anna Paquin was not supposed to be Katie Holmes.

All that said, the movie kept me entertained for its hour and a half. I'm not going to rush out and see it again, but there were enough good points to recommend it. Also it was fun to see Jeff Daniels in a role that I didn't automatically hate. In short, the whole thing had a "Royal Tanenbaums" vibe, so if you dislike that style, you'll hate this movie. I however, am a sucker for that style.

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