Year 16, Day 40 - 2/9/24 - Movie #4,641
BEFORE: I'm not sure how long this film has been on my watchlist, but for sure it's been a while. It was on Netflix or maybe Hulu and I just didn't get to it in time, and I think also I may have been confusing it with an Oscar-nominated documentary called "Faces Places". But upon further review I looked at the synopsis and realized it really belongs in the romance section, which is February, and so it got re-classified and this year I found a slot for it. Simple as that, only it's changed locations, now it's on the Roku channel, but also on AmazonPrime in the "FreeVee" section, which means I'll be seeing ads tonight no matter where I view it. That's also not usually a good sign, if it's running free but with ads. We'll see, though, I'll try to keep an open mind.
Jemaine Clement carries over from "An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn".
EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming today, mea culpa. But I usually like to keep track of how many of their Oscar-nominated movies I've seen, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto. They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 1, devoted to:
THE PLOT: Will Henry is a newly single graphic novelist balancing parenting his young twin daughters and teaching a classroom full of art students while navigating the rich complexities of new love and letting go of the woman who left him.
AFTER: Well, it seems I've transitioned from the romance films that were in the "I can't possibly get together with the person I'm in love with, because reasons, only wait, now it's possible" films to the grouping that demands to be called the "It's Complicated" films. I know, how do I keep coming up with such clever names, right? The easiest way to make romance complicated in a movie is to just do a love triangle thing, like "Alex & Emma" did (though they threw in the novel-within-the-film thing for good measure) and then after that came "An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn", which billed itself on its poster as "A love triangle with too many sides". Only that's not really a triangle, if it's four or five people that's a love quadrilateral or a love rhombus or a love pentagon, to be more precise. Anyway, even THAT'S not accurate, because Lulu Danger was in the middle of all of the relationships, she was married to one man, in nostalgic love with another, and sleeping in a hotel with a third one. Not a love triangle.
Ah, but tonight's film really gets into the complications of being co-parents of twin girls and no longer living together, while each partner is dating or engaged to another person. Yeah, that's more like a love rhombus for sure, only the triangle doesn't really get squared, that would involve the two other people being involved with each other, and that doesn't happen - so I guess imaging two triangles that touch each other on one side? No, that's not right either. Damn, now I have to draw a diagram or something. Maybe we shouldn't even drag Euclidean geometry into this at all, it's just a couple that USED to be together, but now they're each dating one other person, simple as that. So, really more like two "V" shapes than triangles, if that makes sense, and those two "V" shapes share a side, one's upside down so maybe that looks a bit more like a big letter "N". That's "N" as in "Nobody really cares about the shape of the diagram but me." so I kind of have to drop it. OK, we're going with the letter "N" and the big diagonal cross-bar of the "N" represents the relationship between Will and Charlie, who are the parents of twin girls. But then after they split up Charlie dates Gary, and Will dates Diane.
Gary is the guy that Charlie was cheating on Will with, and worse, it was during their twin daughters' birthday party, and that's also when Will found out about it when he walked in on them getting dressed. Whoopsie, but I guess that's a good a time as any to get everything out in the open, in that there really is not a good time to find out your life partner is not happy in your relationship and is banging someone else. Maybe there could have been a better way to find out, but nah, they all suck, really. Or maybe she could have TOLD him, but you know, reasons. It's more cinematic this way.
Fast forward one year (because who wants to just watch a man cry and lose his mind for a year, right?) and Will's in a better place, mentally, and a different place, physically, because he moved to a crappy apartment in Astoria, which is in Queens, while Charlie still lives in the townhouse in Manhattan, or maybe a really nice part of Brooklyn. They're supposedly 90 minutes away by subway, which is a problem every time Will needs to either pick up the girls or drop them off. Also he's an art teacher specializing in comic book illustration, so I'm guessing he's teaching at one of those specialized high schools we have in NYC, I'd say maybe he's teaching at SVA only Kat, one of his students mentions applying to Columbia, which means she's still in high school?
At first it seems like maybe this is going to be another one of those films where a teacher dates one of his students, only it's not, Kat wants to set Will up with her mother, Diane. Which Will's not opposed to, he's got to get back out there at some point, as his ex-girlfriend, Charlie, who said she would NEVER get married to anyone, is considering marrying Gary - yes, the guy she cheated on Will with. Well, this just gets better and better for Will, doesn't it?
Will has dinner with Kat and Diane, and sure, it's awkward, but only because Diane is seeing someone else that Kat doesn't know about - still, she and Will sort of hit it off, I mean, there's something there, and they don't mind spending time together, so maybe? The only thing that could complicate matters further would be if Charlie gets cold feet before the wedding and turns to Will for advice and they sort of both admit they still have feelings for each other. Well, guess what....
This all feels very fresh, very modern, like I could see all this happening in the real world, like a woman saying she'd never get married, but then changing her mind. Or Will thinking that his dating life is over after splitting up with Charlie, but then finding out that doesn't have to be the case, and being pleasantly surprised by that. Or Will wanting to spend more time with his daughters, and seizing the opportunity when Charlie wants to start taking improv classes, but then also learning along the way how hard it is to be the parent that makes sure the kids follow their cello rehearsal schedule and also get to bed at a reasonable time so they can make it to school and not be an hour late every time.
It's a very grown-up thing to co-parent, and it's another very grown-up thing to realize that life is constantly changing, and that you're not the only one who doesn't really have their emotional act together, and we're all just making it up as we go along, trying to roll with the changes and not be overwhelmed by them. And it's very grown-up to not think of a failed relationship as a mistake, but instead as something that worked for a while, until it didn't.
I was reminded by Will's lessons to his students about a book called "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud. I was sure I'd see that man's name somewhere in the credits, as a consultant or an on set-artist or something. Well, I was wrong, but I did see in the credits that most of the illustration work was done by Gray Williams, but some was also done by Dash Shaw, who I know went to the School of Visual Arts, and who animated the films "Cryptozoo" and "My Entire High School Sinkng Into the Sea". I do happen to know several teachers at SVA and I'm working on meeting more of them, you never know where that could lead for an animation professional like myself.
Also starring Regina Hall (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Jessica Williams (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"), Stephanie Allynne (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Michael Chernus (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Aundrea Gadsby (last seen in "Joy"), Gia Gadsby (ditto), Nancy Eng (last seen in "Premium Rush"), Celia Au (last seen in "She Said"), Paul Castro Jr. (last seen in "An American Pickle'), Jason Dyer, Matthew Maher (last seen in "Air"), Dionne Audain (last seen in "Lemon"), Derrick Arthur (last seen in "Delivery Man"), Gavin Haag.
RATING: 6 out of 10 posters for Gary's one-man monologue show
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