**1/2 – This is the 2nd of Wes Anderson protégé Noah Baumbach’s films that I have seen (the first being the more recent “Greenberg”), and I am starting to notice a pattern. His movies are sort of offbeat and quirky like Anderson’s, but are filled with characters that are extremely unlikeable and contain a lot more graphic sexual content. In this film, Jeff Daniels plays an asshole writer who is married to (then separated from) a cheating slut, who have two kids that are equally horrifying. The older son is a mirror image of his smug father, who apparently has no self-esteem and poses as an artsy type of person while in actuality being a complete sham that plagiarizes Pink Floyd and hasn’t read any of the literature he claims to have. The younger son is even weirder, as he drinks beer, masturbates constantly (and smears his ejaculate in various locations around school), swears like a longshoreman, and wanders around shirtless. If ever there was a family of four that is the poster family for complete dysfunctionality, it is the one in this film. Disliking all the characters (including one of the Baldwin brothers playing a strange tennis club pro who is bopping the wife and refers to everyone as ‘brother’) certainly makes this film hard to watch. All that saves it from being as bad as “Greenberg” are a few more laughs.
The Squid and the Whale
**1/2 – This is the 2nd of Wes Anderson protégé Noah Baumbach’s films that I have seen (the first being the more recent “Greenberg”), and I am starting to notice a pattern. His movies are sort of offbeat and quirky like Anderson’s, but are filled with characters that are extremely unlikeable and contain a lot more graphic sexual content. In this film, Jeff Daniels plays an asshole writer who is married to (then separated from) a cheating slut, who have two kids that are equally horrifying. The older son is a mirror image of his smug father, who apparently has no self-esteem and poses as an artsy type of person while in actuality being a complete sham that plagiarizes Pink Floyd and hasn’t read any of the literature he claims to have. The younger son is even weirder, as he drinks beer, masturbates constantly (and smears his ejaculate in various locations around school), swears like a longshoreman, and wanders around shirtless. If ever there was a family of four that is the poster family for complete dysfunctionality, it is the one in this film. Disliking all the characters (including one of the Baldwin brothers playing a strange tennis club pro who is bopping the wife and refers to everyone as ‘brother’) certainly makes this film hard to watch. All that saves it from being as bad as “Greenberg” are a few more laughs.
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