BEFORE: I'm skipping Saturday, and acknowledging that I really watched this one early Sunday morning, so I'm letting another day slide. (Really, I've been behind in the count ever since my plane was delayed on Wednesday, and I really got home on Thursday. I'll explain tomorrow night how this won't affect my film schedule.) We were out late at the new casino at the Aqueduct in Queens last night - I have a system when I play the slot machines that works most of the time (umm, until it doesn't), and last night it worked pretty well. I mostly bet one credit, but after a certain number of spins I increase my betting - so I maximize my number of spins while (theoretically) increasing the bet in time for a payout. Plus I start each machine with a new $20 bill and cash out immediately when I'm up. I never put a payout ticket back into a machine, I only redeem them for cash. And the system netted a $72 profit, which bought a buffet dinner for me and the wife, so I take that as a win. Whatever I may lose on the slots, the casino loses more when they let me into the buffet. Suckers.
Anyway, Natalie Portman carries over again, switching back from comedy to drama.
THE PLOT: A drama that details the story of a woman's difficult relationship with her stepson.
AFTER: That plot description from the IMDB doesn't really do this film justice, because it's about so much more than that one relationship. All of the featured relationships are complicated here - the relationship between a husband and his ex-wife, between the husband and his second wife, between the husband and his son, and between the ex-wife and the second wife. It's all pretty awkward.
Yet, these relationships (and ones even more complex) must be taking place all over the world, all the time, right? So is it better to watch this film and judge the very specific situations put before us, or take them as a metaphorical composite for all the broken and blended families everywhere?
Two more things (at least) complicate the marriage at the core of this film - the grief over a recently deceased newborn daughter, and the fact that Portman's character is still mad at her own father for cheating on her mother. Both situations carry unspoken shame, and perceived blame, which leads to anger, hurt feelings, etc. But I'm a little out of my depth here, since I haven't personally been through those exact flavors of grief.
I'm also calling a mulligan on the step-parent situation, since I've got no experience there either. Watching parents trying to keep their kids from acting up in restaurants, or on airplanes, etc. - I don't know how they do it. I don't seem to have the necessary software for it, and I don't know if I ever will. I used to just talk to kids, like my younger cousin, like they're just tiny adults, but that only gets me so far - plus I know that you can't just act like a kid's friend if you're their parent, because then they don't develop with any discipline. But I don't want to talk down to kids either, so I guess somewhere there's a happy medium.
This could have been an interesting portrait of an upper-class Manhattan blended family, with a focus on the entitled sort of kid, the prep schools and the nannies. But it's a little all over the place, and a bit depressing, with everyone trying to undermine each other, or cut each other down. It doesn't seem like anyone really cares for anyone else, they'd rather just hash out all their disagreements in front of the kid, without worrying about the affect that will have on him. In general, none of the characters seem to care about how any of their actions affect others, and no one seems to want to learn any life lessons, either.
I understand that kids don't always have the same mental filters as adults - they can sometimes ask a question or state an opinion that hurts an adult's feelings. So what are the adults' excuses for doing the exact same thing? And who thought all this would make an entertaining subject for a film? I mean, it might be true that bad things happen to good people, and all relationships eventually crumble, and people in general are not always nice to each other - but that doesn't mean I want to watch a film about all that.
As usual, I penalize for excessive use of flashback, and non-linear storytelling. Please, people, try to assemble all of your film's scenes in the proper chronological order, don't make me have to do all that work for you.
Also starring Scott Cohen, Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "Lucky Numbers"), Charlie Tahan, Debra Monk, Lauren Ambrose (last heard in "Where the Wild Things Are").
RATING: 4 out of 10 banana splits
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