If I ran my own studio and this was brought to me as something we made there would be hell to pay. A bunch of people would have to be off the lot by noon and whatever profits it made would go to finance a new Harmony Korine film as antidote to what we inflicted.
Why is that? It's a simple, feel good movie after all about an aging man, widower, who lacks a story in life and enters the upbeat world of a younger woman. They secured a lovely presence in Hathaway, DeNiro in his usual mode; two faces, sea otter smile or frown.
But it's such a cynical thing to take these people and reduce them in this way to make 'points'. It is feel good at the expense of all the other stuff, starting with laughs.
A story about an old man afraid he doesn't have anywhere to fit and he's reduced to nanny and chaperone and wise adviser of the young. DeNiro feels comfortable in the role or he wouldn't be here, as if he has agreed with himself actor-wise to be that person.
A story about a career-driven woman and her stay-at-home husband who abandoned his own career to raise family; when after feeling neglected he turns to an affair, the only insights we have is that he cheated and she shouldn't compromise her career, no others are really allowed her character. He is contrite by the end.
We would be smacking our heads at all of this, at the old man stereotype if he was black. We would be aghast to see a housewife reduced to this perception of her. It dismays. To see stereotypes we would like chased away from our storytelling come in through the backdoor as values?
It's social tinkering with roles, a bit like that Trainwreck. But indicative of the same tendency to reduce people as once plagued older films that we might would look back on their values as archaic. A revealing bit has three geeky twentysomethings lectured about men having been reduced to boys by a cultural shift as if this was a movie that was trying to see beyond reductions, but alas, restrained by how things really are. Anemic.
Why is that? It's a simple, feel good movie after all about an aging man, widower, who lacks a story in life and enters the upbeat world of a younger woman. They secured a lovely presence in Hathaway, DeNiro in his usual mode; two faces, sea otter smile or frown.
But it's such a cynical thing to take these people and reduce them in this way to make 'points'. It is feel good at the expense of all the other stuff, starting with laughs.
A story about an old man afraid he doesn't have anywhere to fit and he's reduced to nanny and chaperone and wise adviser of the young. DeNiro feels comfortable in the role or he wouldn't be here, as if he has agreed with himself actor-wise to be that person.
A story about a career-driven woman and her stay-at-home husband who abandoned his own career to raise family; when after feeling neglected he turns to an affair, the only insights we have is that he cheated and she shouldn't compromise her career, no others are really allowed her character. He is contrite by the end.
We would be smacking our heads at all of this, at the old man stereotype if he was black. We would be aghast to see a housewife reduced to this perception of her. It dismays. To see stereotypes we would like chased away from our storytelling come in through the backdoor as values?
It's social tinkering with roles, a bit like that Trainwreck. But indicative of the same tendency to reduce people as once plagued older films that we might would look back on their values as archaic. A revealing bit has three geeky twentysomethings lectured about men having been reduced to boys by a cultural shift as if this was a movie that was trying to see beyond reductions, but alas, restrained by how things really are. Anemic.