I thought it was rather overrated myself. Some of the performances were good. The screenplay seemed basically good (it was adapted from a novel that I have not read), but the nominations for direction David O. Russell received kind of baffle me. Also somewhat baffling to me was all the kudos the film received for being a realistic depiction of mental illness. Seemed more like a slightly romanticized depiction of mental illness.

I'm likely giving up too much here..but it's out there to find elsewhere so...

I have grappled with manic depression for probably over two decades, and spun out so bad at one point that I went inpatient for a short period of time...and I find the film gives pretty dangerous advice.

One person recovering from a spin out dating another person recovering from a spin out is going to almost always result in two simultaneous and much more dangerous spin outs. The main character being surrounded by his basically insane and subtly, but persistently, abusive family would only compound the problem. Even his therapist is fairly dangerous, and the film doesn't really dive into any of the steps a person would really have to take to pull their life together after a psychological break so intense that it lead to physical violence and involuntary commitment.

The message seems to be that the cure to serious mental illness is to surround yourself with superstitious lunatics, cave into their psychosis, and then get into a dance off with an equally insane person (who he has no business dating, and was manipulated into dating) to cure mental illness...which is offensively oversimplified to.me, as it sets up the main character to have a child with his equally crazy lover before either of them have fixed their issues, and perpetuate the cycle.

(It also avoids looking to deep at the issue that my generation is seemingly abnormally full of 30 somethings crippled by mental illness to the point of moving back in with their parents...but obviously that is beyond the movies scope. )

I'd love to read some early drafts of this thing to see how it became this...thing...it seems more like a madlib than a movie to me.

I hate this movie more than Dorkman hates Good Will Hunting. and would gladly sit on the couch and dice it to fucking pieces if the opportunity presented.

(The exercise is good advice, I will give it that.)

It's not his fault.

We need to have a WAYDM on that movie posthaste, then, because now I'm desperate to know how someone with such good taste can hate such an amazing film.

This is true.

Last edited by Abbie (2013-10-30 23:32:46)

Unless it's the Princess Bride.

I thought for sure it was you who took issue with the "It's not your fault" scene, calling it lazy screenwriting, but I could be wrong.

If I quickly whip something up and put it in my Cafe Press store, would you be my first customer?

well, then my original statement is still accurate i suppose.

Nope.  I saw it once years ago and found it unbearably smarmy and utterly charmless.  Infinitely less clever than it seemed to think it was.  Annoyed the fuck out of me is exactly what it did.  (Prob'ly should revisit it for this thread, actually.)

Ok, done.  I'll take the Pepsi Popcorn Challenge with The Princess Bride.  I haven't seen it in more than 20 years, mind, and maybe I was just in a bad mood, but it seems like anything less than total adoration will make it appropriate for this thread. 

I'll get back to you by the end of the day.

I'm not that big a fan of The Matrix. I love the plethora of references I can make to it, and I love Agent Smith, but I'm rather "meh" on the film itself. Maybe it's just because I'm getting tired of Chosen Ones and the Hero's Journey, maybe because I've seen too many later films with derivative effects and camera moves to be impressed by its innovations. I think it's a perfectly decent film, but it's not one of the greats in my book.

Slight tangent: as I've mentioned before, I think maybe one other reason it didn't hit me right is that I saw The Formula years before I finally saw The Matrix this summer, and thus had no idea that all of the Matrix references in that film (save the obvious alleyway scene) were references. Thus, when I finally saw The Matrix, I was watching it and seeing references to The Formula. I know it came first, but I can't divorce my experiences from my brain in this particular case, so it creates this weird feeling.

Last edited by Abbie (2013-10-31 21:16:31)