BEFORE: As long as I'm on Netflix, I might as well hang around there and clear this one off the list, too. And since I have no more Amy Adams films, Adam Scott carries over from "Leap Year".
Tomorrow's TCM "31 Days of Oscar" focuses on Best Director nominees and winners - I didn't expect such an important award to be given out so early in the broadcast. But, I guess you've got to keep people tuned in. Here's the line-up:
7:00 am "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) dir: John Huston
9:00 am "Shanghai Express" (1932) dir: Josef von Sternberg
10:30 am "Wilson" (1944) dir: Henry King
1:15 pm "National Velvet" (1944) dir: Clarence Brown
3:30 pm "The Third Man" (1949) dir: Carol Reed
5:30 pm "In Cold Blood" (1967) dir: Richard Brooks
8:00 pm "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) dir: John Ford
10:30 pm "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936) dir: Frank Capra
12:45 am "The Awful Truth" (1937) dir: Leo McCarey
2:30 am "Skippy" (1931) dir: Norman Taurog
4:15 am "Two Arabian Knights" (1927) dir: Lewis Milestone
Hmm, I'm a little iffy on "National Velvet", but for sure I've seen 5 of these: "The Third Man", "In Cold Blood", "The Grapes of Wrath", "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and "The Awful Truth". So another 5 out of 11 brings my total up to 44 out of 119. Closer to 37% now.
THE PLOT: Alex, Emily and their son are new to Los Angeles. A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt and Charlotte. A family "playdate" becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.
AFTER: Admittedly I don't know much about the process of raising children - even first-time parents are probably confused about the process of registering for schools, finding reputable babysitters and such. Then there are the "playdates", which we didn't have when I was a kid, because we just played. And we were left on our own to navigate the rough waters of grammar school, hoping to find some sort of lifelong, or even temporary friend among the random strangers we were seated next to in class. Maybe it's a city thing, this "playdate" concept, because it seems to be the kind of thing that busy urban parents arrange.
In this film, after setting up a playdate for their young boys (who form a bond quite quickly on the playground, for the sake of advancing the plot) the two sets of parents have a playdate of their own, while the kids are sleeping. Look, you can't say it couldn't happen, people form friendships, they drink a little wine, take a few bong hits, and before you know it, the clothes are coming off and things are getting a little kinky.
But rather than being a straight film just about sex and swinging, there's something almost therapeutic here for the four characters involved. There are attractions revealed (but not the ones you might expect) and some people have body issues (again, not the ones you might expect) and the uptight people learn to live a little, and maybe the free-spirited ones learn to dial it back a bit. This is sort of the same principle seen in "Leap Year", where characters change based on who they spend time with, and so this feels like it rings a little true.
But it feels a little bit like I was sold a bill of goods here, like certain things were going to happen between these people and then most of the things you might imagine just didn't occur. Like all indications were that the film was going to "go there", but I suppose I can see that if it did, that would have presented certain other narrative problems that would need to be dealt with. But instead we get an ending that is an anti-climax in every sense of the word.
I hear a lot about "mumblecore" as a film genre, but I know very little about it. I know the Duplass brothers are big in that movement, so when I saw them listed as producers of this film, I wondered if this counts as a mumblecore film. Or "Junebug", does that count? I have no idea. I know that the emphasis is on dialogue over action, but I could say that about a lot of films. Based on a list I found online, the only real mumblecore films I've seen are "Cyrus" and "Safety Not Guaranteed" - so what exactly makes us this genre, and why haven't I seen many of those films? Are they that terrible, and why would I want to watch movies where I can't understand what they're saying, because they're mumbling?
Also starring Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Taylor Schilling (last seen in "Argo"), Judith Godreche (last seen in "The Man in the Iron Mask"), RJ Hermes, Max Moritt, Susan Traylor (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Jim Turner (last seen in "The Lost Boys"),
RATING: 5 out of 10 terrycloth robes
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