BEFORE: Laura Linney carries over again from "Breach", and this is just how things are going to go for a while at least - a spy film, a couple of family-based dramas, maybe another spy film, then a comedy and then a film about Jesus.
THE PLOT: Follows two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980's.
AFTER: Once again, I feel like I should pay more attention to child actors - the actor playing the younger son here is Owen Kline, son of Kevin Kline, and he appeared in "The Anniversary Party", which I watched a year ago, and he also has a role in "Life as a House", which is on my list now. (I've also got "The Emperor's Club" on my list, with Jesse Eisenberg in it. I'm hoping that watching this film here is OK, and that I don't need thi later, to link to other films once back-to-school time comes around.)
I should also pay more attention to other credits, too - about halfway through today's film I started to get a real sort of Wes Anderson vibe from this film, I spotted a number of similarities to films like "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums", like the school stuff with a teen boy going through some awkward phases, a father trying to connect with his two sons, there's a tennis pro...
It turns out Wes Anderson was a producer on this film, when his name popped up at the end, I kind of thought, "Oh, that makes some sort of sense," and even though this was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the two are frequent collaborators. They co-wrote "The Life Aquatic" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" so I guess it's not surprising that I find their creative voices somewhat similar. Plus I'm left wondering after watching it, "Is this a mumblecore film?" (Perhaps not, but then I still don't know what constitutes mumblecore.)
I also felt like this film HAD to be autobiographical, there are so many very specific things, like the fact that it's impossible to find parking in Park Slope (Ironic, right? But that's why I moved out of that neighborhood...) or the fact that after moving to an apartment on the other side of the park, the father and sons had no idea what the new neighborhood was called. And the sons don't just have problems at school or with their parents or their budding sexualities, they have very specific problems with those things.
A little research proves that I'm right - Noah Baumbach had two parents who were writers, his mother was a critic for the Village Voice, and his father was a novelist and film critic, and they all lived in Brooklyn when his parents separated. And if he was born in 1969, he would have been 17 back in 1996, so it all fits, the director is probably represented by Walt, the older brother character here. What a tough thing it must be to watch your parents divorce, to bounce back and forth between their two apartments as they share custody, the awkwardness of them starting up relationships with new partners, etc.
But at the same time the film wants to devote time to being a teenager at school, having those first few relationships with teen girls, getting drunk for the first time, performing in the talent show, so it ends up shooting in too many different directions at once, and the film's under 90 minutes long. But then, if it's about all of these things at once, it sort of giving none of those things the attention they might deserve. Somehow the film should have whittled the subject matter down to focus on just a few general things, or added an extra 10 minutes to try to resolve a few of them.
NITPICK POINT: Walt performs the song "Hey You" in the school's talent show, and claims that he wrote it himself. In a room full of teens and their parents, how come NOBODY recognizes it as a Pink Floyd song, at least, not at first? OK, maybe the teens haven't discovered Floyd yet, but there was bound to be at least one parent there who had heard the song before, so this seemed very unbelievable.
The film's title refers to a display at NYC's Museum of Natural History, where there's a diorama of a sperm whale fighting a giant squid. It's a rather obvious metaphor for Walt's parents, who always seemed to be locked in combat. And the male is obviously the squid, all tentacles and slimy bits, with the whale representing the female in a sort of Mars. vs. Venus analogy. Or who knows, maybe it's supposed to be the other way around, since it's a "sperm" whale, but the metaphor is a bit on the simplistic side.
Also starring Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "Justice League"), William Baldwin (last seen in "Flatliners"), Anna Paquin (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Owen Kline (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Halley Feiffer (last seen in "The Messenger"), Ken Leung (last seen in "Red Dragon"), David Benger, Adam Rose (last seen in "Up in the Air"), Peter Newman, Peggy Gormley (last seen in "The Music Never Stopped"), Greta Kline (also last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Maryann Plunkett, (last seen in "Carol") Eli Gelb (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Henry Glovinsky, Michael Countryman (last seen in "Spotlight"), Alexandra Daddario (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monters")with cameos from John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt.
RATING: 5 out of 10 games of ping pong
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