Barry

Year 13, Day 308 - 11/4/21 - Movie #3,970

BEFORE: Well, one advantage of taking this path, rather than running out to watch "Dune" and "The French Dispatch" - and maybe those are both fine movies, who can say? - is that this allows me to cross off two films that have been on the list for a LONG time. This film was released in 2016 on Netflix, and somehow it's still THERE, I thought most films only last two years on that platform, but I guess the rules are different for films that Netflix produced themselves?  Same goes for tomorrow's film, these were two TOUGH films to link to, but I eventually found my way to them, as Jason Mitchell carries over from "Contraband". 

It took almost five years for me to get to this one, that's a whole Presidential term, PLUS a year. Obama was two Presidents ago, that's how long it took me.  Like I always say, I'm going to get to everything, I just can't tell you exactly when. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Becoming" (Movie #3,814)

THE PLOT: A look into the early life of U.S. President Barack Obama.

AFTER: There's still a lot I didn't know about Barack Obama - and this film focuses on just a few months of his life, back when he was a college student. Before he met Michelle Robinson in Chicago, when he was attending Columbia University in New York, having transferred in from Occidental. Playing basketball, speaking up in poli-sci class, but mostly keeping to himself, feeling like he doesn't fit in because of his mixed heritage and having lived in several countries over his lifetime.  

We all know the back-story, that his mother was a white woman from Kansas, and his father was from Kenya, and that they met in Hawaii in 1960, however after the couple married in 1961, six months before Barack was born, they lived in different cities. Barack lived with his mother in Seattle while his father completed his economics degree in Hawaii, but then attended graduate school at Harvard.  They divorced in 1964, both married other people (five or six marriages between them) and Barack Obama Sr. visited his son only once, Christmas 1971, before he was killed in a car accident in 1982. So now we're supposed to wonder what type of person comes from this unique semi-marriage, this broken family that was nomadic by design. Barack Jr. moved with his mother to Indonesia to join his step-father in 1967, but moved back to live with his grandparents in Honolulu in 1971.  A bit more travel to Indonesia and India, but then this movie finds him in 1981 moving to NYC to attend Columbia. (We're still 8 years ahead of meeting Michelle...)

Some shockers here, like learning that the future president smoked weed, but I guess if you've read his biography he talked about using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine as a teen, so he didn't focus so much on feeling out of place and having questions over who he was.  To me, the opening scene is even more shocking, as his plan lands in New York, Barry is seen smoking ON THE PLANE. Does anybody else remember when there were smoking sections on planes?  When it was OK to light up in a public place like that?  I can imagine some set designer or prop person on this film saying, "Wait a minute, is this right?  Smoking on a plane? Are we sure about this?" Yeah, that used to be a thing - it was phased out in the late 1980's and officially gone in North America as of February 1990. 

Another thing people don't know about Barack in college was that he was roommates with Mason from "Boyhood" and he dated Beth Harmon from "The Queen's Gambit". I'm kidding, of course, but it's fun for me to imagine a fictional crossover here. Look, Wikipedia doesn't have much to say about who Obama dated in college - so maybe a few liberties were taken here, but I'm still willing to bet he got more action in college than I did. Took me almost all of my three years at NYU just to get a real date after MANY failed attempts. But, you gotta keep swinging, it's basically a numbers game in college, and you might have to ask out ten people before one says yes, so if that's the case, there ain't nothing to it but to do it. And don't be hating on Barry for dating a white woman, remember he's half-white himself, and even if you're Team Michelle, he just hasn't met her yet. 

Watch as Barry feels out of place at frat parties, feels out of place on the subway, feels out of place watching breakdancers, and then feels out of place at a wedding in Connecticut. Where, oh where does Barry fit in?  And when will he finish writing that letter to his father that he started months ago with "Dear Dad"?  Worst case of writer's block ever, and he's not even writing a book!  It's just a damn letter, how hard can it be?  There's a few scenes that show him bridging the gap between Columbia and Harlem - check the map, they're just a few blocks away - so why does he feel so out of place at Sylvia's, a very popular soul food restaurant? Really, nobody there probably cared that he was eating with a white girl, clearly Barry was a bit too self-conscious for his own good at the time.  When his girlfriend finally hits him with the "I love you," his response is "Thank you."  Did he not get the memo, how you're supposed to say "I love you" back?  Didn't "Seinfeld" do a whole episode about this?

It's hard to watch a young man who's so unsure of himself, but of course we all know what lies in Barry's future, he's going to embrace the name Barack, become a community organizer and eventually President, and everything's going to be OK, except for that annoying man who's going to start the birther movement and suggest that he was really born in Kenya. Things get better, except for that, I guess. And if he broke up with Charlotte, we all know that he's going to get another chance at love with Michelle.  Maybe they should have called this "Young Barack" instead, because it kind of fits in with that prequel trend with "Young Sheldon" on CBS and more recently "Young Rock" on NBC. I'm assuming much of the humor on those shows comes from knowing more about where the characters are as adults, and then playing around with that. 

The great thing about America, of course, is that technically anybody can become President, even an college kid unsure of himself, who'd never lived in one place for very long, who maybe smoked a bit too much weed and couldn't commit to a relationship - one day might find himself living in that beautiful (White) house, with a beautiful wife, and he may ask himself, "Well, how did I get here?"  I guess this is the answer - only, is it? I honestly don't know if this is the way it all went down or not. Were we supposed to NOT know that this is Barack Obama all along, and figure it out at the end when he stops going by the name "Barry"?  Because, you know, it's sort of obvious.  Now I guess I have to add that other movie to my list, "Southside With You", if I want to see the fictional version of "When Barack Met Michelle".  

Also starring Devon Terrell (last seen in "The Professor"), Anya Taylor-Joy (last seen in "Marrowbone"), Ellar Coltrane (last seen in "The Circle"), Ashley Judd (last seen in "Olympus Has Fallen"), Jenna Elfman (last seen in "Town & Country"), Avi Nash, John Benjamin Hickey (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Tommy Nelson (last seen in "Moonrise Kingdom"), Linus Roache (last seen in "Non-Stop"), Danny Hoch (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Sawyer Pierce, Eric Berryman (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Ralph Rodriguez (last seen in "Compliance'), Danny Henriquez (last seen in "Southpaw"), Tessa Albertson, Annabelle Attanasio, Matt Ball, Markita Prescott, Souleymane Sy Savane (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Brandon Bermeo, Flora Wildes, Samantha Marie Ware, Alexis Nicole Smith, Jeremy Sample (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Michael Crane, Chukwudi Iwuji (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Robert G. McKay (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Marion Kodama Yue, with a cameo from Fab 5 Freddy and archive footage of Ed Koch. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 pick-up games