BEFORE: As I said last night, I could link to pretty much anything after "The Lego Movie" - there are at least three different directions I could go from here. I could follow the Lego angle, because I have a Lego Batman movie to watch (but apparently it's not THE Lego Batman movie, which is still in production) or I could follow the Christopher Miller link and follow it with "22 Jump Street", which shares at least four actors with "The Lego Movie".
But, I've got another way to get to "22 Jump Street", and I only have one way to get to "Nebraska", so that's my plan. Will Forte, who did the voice of Lego Abe Lincoln last night, carries over.
THE PLOT: An aging, booze-addled father makes the trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a million-dollar Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize.
AFTER: At first glance, this film doesn't seem to share much with "The Lego Movie" - one is fast-paced, colorful and frenetic, and the other is slow, colorless and depressing. But at heart, they're both about a father and a son. In fact, if I go back a few days to "Delivery Man", it's almost like a defacto trilogy about fathers and sons - "Delivery Man" was about a man becoming a father, "The Lego Movie" was about a father and son bonding over toys, and then "Nebraska" is all about an older father being taken care of by his son. Three different stages of fatherhood in one week, it's almost poetic.
And poetry is a good word to use with this film, with its long, complacent shots of the Midwest landscape, with the occasional broken-down farmhouse or barn. The loneliness of the region, encapsulated in bleak cinematography and lack of quick editing. If "The Lego Movie" was geared toward a child's attention span, this is clearly aimed at lethargic adults, there couldn't be more of a contrast there.
But this is also about what happens when people get old, and they spend too much time listening to telemarketers or believing in e-mails from Nigerian princes who need a business partner in the U.S. to help them deposit an inherited fortune. Bruce Dern's character here believes he has won a million dollars, all he has to do is show up in Lincoln, Nebraska with the winning numbers he was mailed, and order a few magazine subscriptions to seal the deal.
It's the kind of offer we all get in the mail several times a month, and most of know they're B.S., but what happens to old people that makes them so gullible? Is it just the fact that they were part of the "greatest generation", and they want to believe the best about everyone, including junk mailers? Or do our logic circuits get fried after too much time (and alcohol), allowing us to believe in the unlikely, or to believe what we WANT to be true? Much in the same way that a lot of people tend to find religion if they believe they're going to die soon, just to hedge their bets.
Or is there more going on here? Are we just dealing with a typical man with dementia, or does he, on some level, understand that he probably did not win the million bucks? Because if you think about it, he got to spend a lot of driving time with his son, and when he was back in his hometown, and "accidentally" spilled the beans about his windfall, suddenly he became the center of attention, and got some measure of revenge on people who had wronged him in the past. Maybe he knew all along what he was doing. But that's just a theory.
Also starring Bruce Dern (last seen in "Monster"), June Squibb (last seen in "Alice"), Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Rance Howard (last seen in "The Paper"), Devin Ratray, Tim Driscoll, Angela McEwan, Mary Louise Wilson, Missy Doty.
RATING: 5 out of 10 stereo speakers
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