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Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011)
A story about lost individuals becoming a family again
Jeff, Who Lives At Home is a great example of an indie film. Jeff, a 30-year-old slacker, is searching for meaning in an aimless life, looking at pop culture references for a sign.
Jeff's journey may seem like a simple one, but his mission to buy wood-glue for a broken shutter is not dissimilar to Odysseus's epic return. The twist in the third act underscores the idea that within all of us lies a destiny. (Jeff, Who Becomes a Hero, as a title, would've given it away.) Jason Segel gives a great goofy charm to the lead character, and he is ably supported by Ed Helms as his obnoxious and insensitive brother. Susan Sarandon is faultless as the mother looking for a sign of her own as she suffers bleak corporate office cubicle.
Ultimately, this is not only a comedy about a slacker living in his mother's basement, but a hopeful look at family and what that word means. It starts slow, then reveals some wonderful surprises.
The Enforcer (1976)
The essential elements of a good cop story stay the same
The Enforcer is Clint Eastwood's third of five outings as the iconic Dirty Harry – San Francisco's toughest cop, packing a .44 Magnum and no-nonsense attitude. This time he is after a sophisticated group of extortionists after the Mayor.
When reviewing a film that is close on 40 years old, it is interesting to note how much stays the same in an actioner, and what has changed over the decades.
One essential element remains: a fascinating central character. Clint Eastwood is perfect as Harry Callahan – inscrutable, with droll talent for a one-liner. The sidekick is important, too – in this case Tyne Daly as Kate Moore, his new partner. And a worthy villain is another timeless ingredient – like Bobby Maxwell, a bitter ex-Vet looking to make a weak and indifferent bureaucracy pay for his suffering.
Some things that have changed? Pacing – you just have to a recent thriller to notice how much sharper, faster, kinetic the action has become. A chase scene in The Enforcer makes up almost a whole sequence with only a fight sequence at the end – it could have been half the time. Stereotypes – the jive-talking black characters, as part of a Black Pantheresque group, would seem uncomfortable now. And Kate Moore, with her clunky shoes and big handbag, seems strange to a modern viewer – she'd have to be reinvented for today's audience.
Closer (2004)
Omission and flashback structure a stark drama
Closer is an intense drama, focusing on a menage a quatre, starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman. It is interesting to note that the film is based on Patrick Marber's stage work, with the playwright as screenwriter. Often great writers play with time in a narrative, and this definitely informs the structure of Closer. Marber uses omission and flashback with abrupt emotional power in telling the story of betrayed trust, emotional and sexual infidelity. Each sequence is of another timeframe of the story - sometimes a day before, sometimes a year forward – without using title cards to cue the audience. What he leaves out comes out with breathtaking emotional reverberation is scenes of raw confrontation.
The dialogue is superb: cutting, cruel, insidiously real – often uncomfortably honest. The problem, however, of stripping characters down to only their emotional selfishness and sexual secrets is four unlikeable protagonists. We don't particularly like any of these characters – Law's character seems weak and needy, Owen's is a bully, Roberts's character seems indifferent. Only Portman creates some teasing mystery and deeper vulnerability in her portrayal.
I think the production compensates for this by casting highly attractive actors, but it doesn't always work in making the characters seem sympathetic
Identity Thief (2013)
Fun and engaging
This movie is a fun take on the road-movie genre, as Sandy (Bateman) must take Diana, the woman who stole his identity (McCarthy) from Florida to his homebase of Colorado in order to save his job.
Sandy has to lose his identity to find himself, to discover his strengths and stand up for himself. Diana learns to let go of her selfishness and loneliness and trust him. It's a great statement to make, even in a light-hearted movie.
The character of Diana is wonderfully put together. She is not a cliché but a complex woman, with whom we finally have empathy for. The motel sequence is very funny too.
The English Patient (1996)
Hearts of Fire
English Patient
Hearts of Fire
Laszlo Almasy (Fiennes), Hungarian aristocrat and respected explorer is part of the International Sand Club before World War II. During a desert exploration, he meets Katherine (Scott-Thomas), a whole-hearted adventurer, and falls in love – even though she is married to Geoffrey (Firth), a British patriot. When we first see Almasy, he is badly burnt in a plane crash. A self-sacrificing French-Canadian nurse, Hana (Binoche) takes him to a war-shredded monastery to live out his last weeks. Hana is joined at the villa by Kip (Andrews), a Sikh bomb-disposal expert and a bitter ex-spy turned thief and addict called Caravaggio (Dafoe). The patient's story, told in flashbacks, forms the nucleus of this sweeping romance.
The English Patient is unusual in that both its main narrative and subplot are love stories informed by the displacement of war. The love affair between Almasy and Katherine is a classic triangle, a story of forbidden love against the tumult of changing history. Almasy says he doesn't like to possessed, but soon he is possessed by his need for Katherine: he becomes jealous, violent, mad. He says the heart is 'an organ of fire' – and he is consumed by a fire out of control. And Geoffrey's act of desperation is a catalyst for the film's final tragedy.
On the other hand, Hana's love affair with Kip is far more naturalistic, tender and explorative. It explores beauty and trust. Ultimately, it is about healing, and cultures coming together. Whereas Almasy is betrayed by his Hungarian past by the suspicious English, Hana and Kip are examples of the hope for a multi-cultural world after the war. It is an idealistic statement to be sure, but a powerful one nonetheless.
The script very cleverly brings Hana into Almasy's storyline by giving Katherine's poignant last letter to Almasy a voice, and giving her the power to release the burnt Almasy from his suffering.
Hana is a wonderfully empathetic hinge between the two stories, between past and present. In this regard, she is probably the most important character in the film.
Director Anthony Minghella has infused every frame of the movie with light and dark, colour and shadow. The stark gold of the North African desert is juxtaposed against the soft dappled green-and-blue summer of Italy.
Two scenes stand out: Almasy and the team exploring the Cave of Swimmers against Hana and Kip exploring the Italian church. Both illuminate something hidden, hitherto unseen, mysterious and beautiful. Both become exquisite and lavish metaphors for the human condition. The light plays a part in delineating the two love stories. In the ACT II climax, Katherine is left alone in a cave with dying torch light as Almasy is dragged through a dark tunnel, a captive in a British Jeep: so symbolic of death.
The film explores many themes on many levels. One that is the most powerful is the idea of personal history against landscape, biography, war – between one man's memory and another's idea of truth, romantic myth and appalling reality.
Almasy's book is by Herodotus, the father of history. The idea of storytelling is a powerful thread through the film: from the campfire stories in the desert, to the folk song, to the letters and notes we find inside his well-worn book. In the end, Hana – the most hopeful, kind and idealistic character – carries this book and this part of history into the future.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Trippin' with the Carrie Nations
An all-girl group, the Carrie Nations, comes to Hollywood to make it big. But Kelly (Dolly Read), Casey (Cynthia Meyers) and Pet (Marcia McBroom) are lured into a kaleidoscope of sex, drugs and evil that leads to the ultimate violence in a city of deranged angels.
The first time you watch Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, you experience it as a cult cinematic mind trip: a hallucinogenic soft-core porn tour to the tail end of the Swinging Sixties.
On another level, it is a clever, funny, subversive. The Carrie Nations are named after a Mother Grundy leader of the moral majority, a woman opposing booze. Z-Man (John Lazar) with his OTT Shakespeare-by-way-of-an-acid-trip dialogue is a fitting tribute to the Bard: in Shakespeare's plays no one was ever what they truly seemed. The horror at the end makes a statement about the notorious Helter Skelter murder of Sharon Tate in its own twisted way.
The film is also better structured than the incoherent Valley of the Dolls. It makes good use of montage sequences, set pieces and music. It succeeds, for me, because it never for one single frame takes itself seriously.
Joyful Noise (2012)
Upbeat, noisy, feel-good, colourful
Joyful Noise is one of those movies you should dismiss as feel-good corn, but because of the great music and endearing performances of the leads you end up enjoying.
Vi-Rose (Queen Latifah) becomes the new leader of a gospel choir when GG's (Dolly Parton) husband dies. The rivalry between the two women forms the main storyline. Vi's daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer) falls in love with GG's wayward grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan.) All of them are involved in the choir and must work together if they are to win a major choral competition and bolster the morale of their small town, a community hit by the economic meltdown.
Sound predictable? It is. But it's also a lot of fun. Queen Latifah is authentic and believable as a single mother trying to hold it together. Parton delivers some killer lines ("God didn't make plastic surgeons so they could starve"). Palmer gives a resonant performance of Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror, and Jordan is likable, handsome and has a strong voice.
The East (2013)
Visual and emotional power in a tense thriller
This is the story of a woman who goes undercover and finds her true self.
Sarah Moss (Brit Marling), a Christian girl with a solid and dependable boyfriend, works for a corporate intelligence agency. Her first assignment is to assume another identity – that of a drifter – so she can infiltrate and gather intel on a radical group of eco-terrorists called the East.
The leader of the East is the enigmatic, haunted, beautiful Benji (Alexander Skarsgard); Sarah is drawn to him and the free and honest lifestyle of his followers.
As she gets drawn to their mysterious operations, Sarah learns a few things. Each of the cell has a visceral and personal connection to the corporations they're targeting – from Doc (Toby Kebbel) wanting revenge on a pharmaceutical brand to Izzy (Ellen Page) wanting to punish her family business for polluting the environment. Sarah's moral compass shifts as she realises these corporations are corrupt, deadly, without a care for humanity.
When she has an opportunity to turn rogue and fight for the cause, she has to make the biggest decision of her life.
The East is a visually beautiful piece of cinema; it has a cool, natural 70s feel to it. It is not only a tense thriller, but explore a theme that will have you questioning your own values.
Valley of the Dolls (1967)
Behind the Camp Classic Is a Message - The Wrong One
The book Valley of the Dolls remains one my favourite novels: it is bitterly glamorous, savage in its dissection of fame. It hits hard – even after almost 50 years of publication.
I love the movie of Jacqueline Susann's bestseller, made a year after the book was released, for a different reason: it is a classic example of perfect camp cinema, its kitschy design, clumsy story telling. It's so bad, it's good.
From Patty Duke lurching around in doll-addled state, to Barbara Parkins gliding icily through every scene with perfect eye make-up and no emotion, to Sharon Tate sprouting the most ridiculous dialogue imaginable – it's a doozy.
However, watching it again the other night, I realised two things. Firstly, if this film was made today, Jackie Susann would've had so much more control over the film, in the way Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling do—it would have to be made faithfully even if it took two instalments.
The second thing I realised was that the movie, in the final analysis, does a grave disservice to the central message of the novel. The novel points out that fame is bitter pill to swallow – there is a price to pay, and it's steep.
The movie highlights every lurid tragedy and salacious detail of the book but seems to say, "OK, you can go through all of this girls, but you can return to your snowy bucolic hometown and everything will be fine. No harm, no foul."
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)
Clumsy and implausible
Not having seen the 50s original, I didn't know what to expect from this film—but being a fan of Michael Douglas and court thrillers, I gave it a go.
The film is entertaining, with a likable cast of young actors in Jesse Metcalfe and Amber Tambyln. It is also, in places, predictable and implausible.
To suspend our disbelief that a journalist would willingly implicate themselves in a crime would involve a highly personal reason—that he does have a connection to the crime is only revealed in th closing moments. It can be as over the top as you like, but we must believe it as an audience.
The film also has some clumsy sequencing and poor music/sound that destroys a lot of the tension. By the midpoint, the lead has made so many poor decisions as a seemingly intelligent character, that we may not care whether he wins or not.
The twist ending was as contrived as the rest of the plot and, while effective, did not have the chilling resonance it might have had if we were more emotionally connected to the characters.
Finally, if as a film maker you have access to a talent as extraordinary as Michael Douglas, even if he not the lead, make sure that you every scene with him in it lifts the tension and advances the plot. The final confrontation between Mark Hunter (Douglas), as antagonist, and CJ (Metcalfe) in prison was flat.
House at the End of the Street (2012)
Clever use of horror elements in gripping story
Horrors are often seen as mindless gore fests and, for the most part, they are. They are genre-driven escapism and to find a fresh angle in the genre is not always easy.
House at the End of the Street manages to do that. It manages to play with the archetype of the home – either temporary, displaced, forgotten – in a way that creeps us out. The corruption of the home is a familiar device to create horror and suspense – and the writers and directors use it for maximum effect.
The stereotype of girl-in-danger is played out with a strong female heroine Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence), who has a strong personality, courage and quiet charisma. It is not clichéd or predictable. Ryan (Max Thieriot) as the troubled neighbour has the vulnerability of a child, but also can portray menace.
The idea of the monster-in-us-all is cleverly used and leads to a well-written and paced twist in the story.
The House at the End of the Street used storytelling to grab us rather than cheap tricks or f/x. It has mystery rather blood to keep us enthralled.
To be sure, it is not a great movie but works well as Friday night in and is well pitched at a younger audience. Worth a look.
Jade (1995)
Extreme sexual politics at play
Jade is a self-mocking film, insofar as it references its sister film, Basic Instinct: the dangerous female protagonist, the setting of San Francisco, the glib pseudo psychology, even the dialogue. Yet even if you never saw Basic Instinct, it still stands as a tense, radical and erotic thriller.
It builds the world of the characters with such power and confidence that you believe everything, despite the implausible, overblown and familiar plot. There is also a lot of self-deprecating humour in the use of stereotypes – the corrupt governor, the voyeur-next-door, the cheating husband – that you start enjoying the game rather than judging it.
The film has one of the best car chase sequences ever, through the vertiginous streets of San Francisco, via a fiercely colourful Chinese parade – complete with rippling dragons and laughing buddhas – to the seedy docks. The black Ford Thunderbird takes on a malevolent persona of its own – with a blood-soaked eye, opaque windows and a shark-black body, it becomes a chilling assassin.
Controversial writer Joe Estherhaz created a new cinematic anti-heroine in the 90s, with Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct and Trina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino) in Jade: powerful and beautiful women exploring the extremes of their sexuality, to the sharpest point of violence, brutality and even death.
It says more about the power dynamics between men and women than the sex itself, which is what many critics missed. They are played against craven, weak and ineffectual male characters. While the sex scenes titillate with S&M themes and lesbian fantasies, there are also squirmy and subconscious castration fears behind every frame.
Gravity (2013)
Simply Powerful
Gravity is a film about an astronaut who needs to get back to Earth. It is also a story about a woman who needs to get back her own life.
What I love about Gravity is its bracing simplicity. Get your hero up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Let him get himself down. That's the plot proverb at work here. Get Sandra Bullock up in space. Throw space debris and fire at her. Let her get herself back to Earth – with a little help from George Clooney, of course.
The film's pure and uninterrupted structure gives it power and allows Sandra Bullock as Dr Ryan Stone to dominate our emotions for 89-90 minutes.
The film doesn't only operate as a thrilling actioner. There's a quiet symbolism of birth – or rather emotional rebirth – in the umbilical tether between Stone and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and in the beautiful image of Stone rotating in a near-foetal position inside the International Space Station. Comparisons to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey come to mind. And of course, I saw a strong influence from the character of Ripley in Alien in Dr Ryan Stone.
The opening shot – a single and unbroken 12-minute shot – is also a directing feat. It's amazing to think they whole thing was blue-screened.
Elizabeth (1998)
A Regal Arc
I watched Elizabeth again last night on TCM. I was shocked to realise it was almost twenty years old, but gratified to see it follows a classic structure.
As a writer, it must be an enormous challenge to write a historical screenplay and still make your main character dynamic, relevant, someone who changes.
Michael Hirst (The Tudors, The Vikings) does this splendidly in Elizabeth. When we first see her, she is a young long-haired princess gambolling in the countryside, excited to see the man she adores. She is laughing and happy, almost unaware of the burden of her destiny. In the final images, we see an austere and isolated monarch, in a rich and contrived Tudor interior, hair shorn and face whitened to an intimidating regal mask. There is no doubt that she is now a strong queen and leader in those last moments.
Watching Elizabeth again, it is interesting how the movie operates on the premise of choices, and how these shape a history and an individual. The choice between marriage and duty, Catholic or Protestant etc., are all played out in the story and are set up in the first few minutes of the film in compelling way.
Celebrity (1984)
A Story as Big as Texas
Growing up in the age of Judith Krantz, Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins, I was in love with the blockbuster novel and the inevitable TV miniseries. Thomas Thompson's Celebrity was one of the most enthralling, as both novel and TV spectacular. It was a story that stayed with me forever.
Of course, one could say it is pure schlock, but this is A-Grade schlock, a big sprawling tale of three Texan boys caught in the trap of fame, told with unapologetic bravado.
TJ Luther (Beck) becomes a charismatic preacher at the bizarre City of Miracles. Mackenzie Crawford (Bottoms) becomes a beefcake movie star after a football injury. Kleber Cantrell (Masters) becomes, like Thomas Thompson himself, an award-winning journalist. The bonds of friendship are tested by fame, betrayal and violence.
Most pulpy and fabulous miniseries of the 80s focused on female protagonists - Sidney Sheldon was famous for his strong heroines, Jackie Collins has her set of Hollywood wives, actresses and mistresses, and Judith Krantz had her impossibly romantic female leads - so it was refreshing to see the multi-character blockbuster format populated with three male characters.
Writers would do well to delve into the elements that made it so successful: a central secret, a fascinating historical backdrop, a sensational murder trial and, of course, lashings of sex and scandal. For me, Thomas Thompson was a blue-collar Truman Capote, who told his stories with vigour and without pretension. It's still a damn good story.
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
Dragged Through History
The film, with a typical Irish magic for lyricism in language and story, is best seen as a picaresque – in the tradition of Tom Fielding or Don Quixote. For would-be screenwriters and directors, it also reaffirms the inexhaustible power of a narrative when it is led by a fascinating character.
And Patrick 'Kitten' Braden is just such a character. Kitten is so much more than a drag queen or a Mitzi-Gaynorish queer fish in a serious and bleak world. Kitten is both the story and storyteller. This is achieved with an ingenious script.
With her search for the Phantom Lady (his mother) and a yearning for a romantic love (the repeated scenario of being visited in hospital by a paramour), Kitten transcends mere screen characterisation to become a grand cinematic device: a peculiarly angelic and hyperbolic symbol of human love.
In many ways, Breakfast on Pluto reminds me of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and even, dare I say, Forest Gump. The story of the incorruptible misfit – the decidedly odd outsider as the ultimate fantasist – dragging the audience through a very real and troubled history. In Hedwig, it is the ashes of World War II. In Gump, it is the radical changes of the 60s and Vietnam. Here we have the clandestine IRA revolt against Britain.
A standout moment has to be the juxtaposition of a Catholic confessional booth in rural Ireland against the peep show booth in seedy London. Genius visual story telling.
Cillian Murphy, it must be said, is incandescent in the role of Kitten Braden, well supported by a mostly Irish cast. Watch out for Dominic Cooper in a small scene at a nightclub. For a short amount of screen time, his charisma is immediate and shows why he has gone on to bigger successes.
Lose Your Head (2013)
Lose Yourself in Great German Indie
Lose your head
This was one of my favourite films of last year. Patrick Schukmann's script is superb, as is his co-direction with Stefan Westerwelle. The film's Act I Exposition is long but intriguing —it almost seems loose, haphazard, indulgent.
But then, like a grapple hook, it links us to the main plot. We immediately understand how the characters are linked – and why – and the hair on the back of your neck rises. You're locked into the predicament and this tension doesn't flag until the end.
Luis's (Fernando Tielve) obsession with the older Viktor (Marko Madic) is at the heart of this thriller. It is explored with a fresh, erotic eye. Schukmann explained how some scenes were a direct homage to Hitchock's Vertigo and others were subtle references to Roeg's Don't Look Now. These were neat touches to satisfy the movie buff.
Tielve gives a great performance as the lead: sexy, vulnerable, real, adventurous. Madic's charisma also pulls us in, and he cuts a fine balance between older lover and potential psycho.
Berlin, as a backdrop, was shown in gritty authenticity. What I loved was the writer's playfulness with coincidence and the absurd. Luis's tragic reunion with Grit (Samia Muriel Chancrin) is a case in point. It reminds me of Patricia Highsmith in its authentic, non-formulaic approach.
And it has one of the best lines of dialogue. "He threw me in the river and I fell in love with him," says Luis of Victor.
Flight (2012)
What makes a hero?
Flight 9/10
The power of this movie is how it uses its fascinating anti-hero, played by Denzel Washington as Whip Whittaker, to ask some tough and intriguing questions. Just like the stunning crash sequence destabilises the life of Whip, an alcoholic pilot, the aftermath changes the way we as an audience look at him. Can a true hero, who saves lives, be an unlikeable alcoholic? That was the unsettling and made me change the way I thought about this question. And then the writer brings in a theme of religion: the plane crashes into a church's field, the co-pilot is an extreme Christian, even Whip's ally – a senior flight attendant – has a strong faith. Yet here is an arrogant man without faith in anyone except his own deep denial – and is unable to surrender his burden of addiction. The idea of surrender to a higher power is central to recovery – yet it's not hard to see how Whip could see himself as a higher power, saving lives in a trouble sky. I know some critics found some of the plot points implausible – such as how his addiction went unnoticed in regulatory tests. Others found the 11th hour turnaround in his character a cop-out. These are valid points, but I thought the movie made us see alcoholism in a strikingly original way and that has to be praised.
Anna Karenina (2012)
Handsome production that could have used more charm
I wasn't expecting to be swept away in this movie. In many ways, it reminded me of a musical – like Joel Schumacher's 'Phantom of the Opera' – without the music. The movie is framed by the conventions of a stage play – with the elaborate props, machinery etc. seen by the audience. At first, I found this a bit fussy and distracting, but it was so superbly done, I was enchanted. It was also a clever way to distil Leo Tolstoy's epic story into just over two hours. The dance scene, at the first ball, was a neat shorthand for the budding passion between lovers. The story also gives you a pervasive sense of society's pressure on Anna without being obtrusive. Script, perfect. Music, perfect. And I loved the use of colour. Vronsky's angelic whites and princely blues reminded me of Frederic March's incarnation of the seductive count. Darker colours – red, blacks etc. – on Anna acted as a portent of what was to befall her in the end. Jacqueline Durran deserved her Oscar. The only draw back in using the theatrical device was a lack of empathy for the characters. It did, in places, seem a bit bloodless.
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
A new appreciation of a classic
Sunset Boulevard 10/10
When I couldn't sleep the other night, I watched the Special Collector's Edition of Sunset Boulevard. I saw this movie years ago. After seeing the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in Johannesburg recently, I fell in love with it all over again. I know there's nothing new to say about Billy Wilder's classic – its camp sharpness, its haunting Gothic melancholy, its rich, dark comedy, its insidiously fascinating characters – so I won't try. What struck me was recognising Wilder as a genius director. Often seen as a writer who favoured the screenplay more than visual elements, in this movie he really showed some innovative insight into framing his masterpiece. Two, in particular, stand out – the fish eye view of the body in the swimming pool and use of powder on the edges of the camera lenses. I also enjoyed the commentary into the music of the film. When I watched the film again, I had a new appreciation for Franz Waxman's score.
Rabbit Hole (2010)
Grief and loss in suburbia
Watching this a second time, I was gripped by the powerful performances in this sensitive, heart-squeezing – and often quite funny – drama about husband and wife dealing with the loss of their young son. Nicole Kidman as the wife is subtle, restrained, utterly believable – we feel such empathy for her. And possibly even more empathy for Aaron Eckhart as the husband, in what has to be one of his best performances. For me some of the finest acting comes from Miles Teller, as the teenage driver responsible for the death of the child. He is not in that many scenes, but he impresses in an understated, unblemished and authentic performance. Dianne Wiest, as always, gives the story extra gravitas in a devastatingly sad, funny and poignant role as Kidman's mother and a survivor herself. It reminded me of Ordinary People in many ways, and as deserving of praise.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
A Bi-Polar Review: Loved the characters, Not so much the Plot
I loved Bradley Cooper's Pat and Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany. As two unconventional souls, living arrested lives, they deliver powerhouse performances.
In fact, all the characters really shine in a way that was honest, crazy, sexy. Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro were pitch perfect as the parents. The family dynamics - the humor, the conflict - were so authentic, I believed I was watching a real family in real time.
I just found a disconnect between the slightly contrived rom-com conventions used to structure the movie - the Dirty Dancing-type competition and the ball game bet.
For me, I would've loved the plot to be as loose, crazy and unpredictable as Pat and Tiffany. They were the silver linings in the story.