One thing I can say for certain about the folks who love this movie: they've never taken a college physics class!
Above all, an indie film like this has to be *true.* Drop in a scene that plays false, and you risk losing the viewer for good. It's a testament to what's good about this film that it manages to survive some absolutely terrible chunks.
To say that John Turturro's scenes as a college physics professor are unbelievable (if you've ever studied physics) is a massive understatement. In fact, to say that they bear no relationship whatsoever to anything that might conceivably happen in a college physics classroom is still an understatement. Moving from acceleration to entropy in the middle of a lecture? C'mon. And his final rant about the nature of physics expresses a mindset *exactly opposite* the attitude any actual physics professor would have. (It is, however, the mindset you'd expect a physics professor to have if you were a screenwriter who not only had no idea what physics was actually about, but were too lazy to have your script vetted by someone who did.) This storyline, if excerpted, would be a C- student film. Making a C- student film starring John Turturro and Amy Irving -- that's a triumph of awful screenwriting.
I don't know whether it's Matthew McConaughey himself or just Jill Sprecher's direction, but he gives one of the worst, least subtle performances of the last few years. Did I ever really believe him in either his on-top-of-the-world or down-in-the-dumps mode? Not for an instant. Of the thousands of human beings I've ever known, has anyone telegraphed their emotions so obviously? No.
Little things, too. Are they any college professors who still smoke? Would Turturro's obsessive-compulsive neat-freak have an affair with the one in a hundred who did? Would rich people tolerate their housekeepers smoking in their homes (as Tia Texada's character does)? If there's an indie film God, He's in the details, and so many of the details in this film are thoughtlessly wrong (or, in many cases, forced into wrongness for some desired effect).
What's good? Alan Arkin is terrific. His storyline (thankfully, the predominant one) is a little cartoonish and credulity-stretching, but it works great at the level of fable. Clea DuVall is always worth looking at, though her character transformation, like McConoughey's, is rather too broad. The movie dares to tackle the big issues of Happiness and Fate / Luck (the conversations are really about two things, it seems to me), and can't help being thought-provoking -- even if most of the talk strikes me as being merely pseudo-profound.
And finally, of course, some of us are suckers for this sort of story structure (which, Magnolia comparisons notwithstanding, was actually perfected by Philip K. Dick in early novels like THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE). The casual interweaving of the four separate stories is very nicely done.
6/10 and not recommended if you're not a fan of this story structure . . . 7/10 if you are, or if you're a big Alan Arkin fan (and you should be, on both counts!).
Above all, an indie film like this has to be *true.* Drop in a scene that plays false, and you risk losing the viewer for good. It's a testament to what's good about this film that it manages to survive some absolutely terrible chunks.
To say that John Turturro's scenes as a college physics professor are unbelievable (if you've ever studied physics) is a massive understatement. In fact, to say that they bear no relationship whatsoever to anything that might conceivably happen in a college physics classroom is still an understatement. Moving from acceleration to entropy in the middle of a lecture? C'mon. And his final rant about the nature of physics expresses a mindset *exactly opposite* the attitude any actual physics professor would have. (It is, however, the mindset you'd expect a physics professor to have if you were a screenwriter who not only had no idea what physics was actually about, but were too lazy to have your script vetted by someone who did.) This storyline, if excerpted, would be a C- student film. Making a C- student film starring John Turturro and Amy Irving -- that's a triumph of awful screenwriting.
I don't know whether it's Matthew McConaughey himself or just Jill Sprecher's direction, but he gives one of the worst, least subtle performances of the last few years. Did I ever really believe him in either his on-top-of-the-world or down-in-the-dumps mode? Not for an instant. Of the thousands of human beings I've ever known, has anyone telegraphed their emotions so obviously? No.
Little things, too. Are they any college professors who still smoke? Would Turturro's obsessive-compulsive neat-freak have an affair with the one in a hundred who did? Would rich people tolerate their housekeepers smoking in their homes (as Tia Texada's character does)? If there's an indie film God, He's in the details, and so many of the details in this film are thoughtlessly wrong (or, in many cases, forced into wrongness for some desired effect).
What's good? Alan Arkin is terrific. His storyline (thankfully, the predominant one) is a little cartoonish and credulity-stretching, but it works great at the level of fable. Clea DuVall is always worth looking at, though her character transformation, like McConoughey's, is rather too broad. The movie dares to tackle the big issues of Happiness and Fate / Luck (the conversations are really about two things, it seems to me), and can't help being thought-provoking -- even if most of the talk strikes me as being merely pseudo-profound.
And finally, of course, some of us are suckers for this sort of story structure (which, Magnolia comparisons notwithstanding, was actually perfected by Philip K. Dick in early novels like THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE). The casual interweaving of the four separate stories is very nicely done.
6/10 and not recommended if you're not a fan of this story structure . . . 7/10 if you are, or if you're a big Alan Arkin fan (and you should be, on both counts!).