BEFORE: There, I did it, I skipped a day. I don't think I can possibly be expected to work late on a Sunday night, show up back in the same location early on a Monday morning, and somehow watch a movie in-between. It's not humanly possible... But since I need the money, let me do those two shifts with a tight turn-around, and the movie progress is just going to have to wait. I think this will allow me to line up another birthday on Wednesday, so there IS an upside. I just need to keep looking up actor birthdays, if that's any kind of guiding force I can lean on that to get from one holiday to the next, if need be. Certainly with no holiday in the next 26 days and the topic is basically random, I need to let something take the wheel.
The only important thing right now is to keep an eye on the overall number - I can drop a movie, I can add a movie, as long as the count stays the same, more or less. And if I drop without replacing, that's not a big deal, as I can do another skip day. Last year we took a whole week off in March, so I'm ahead in the count over where I was a year ago. Whatever...so I'm going to drop a film two slots from now because it seems like maybe a good film for a Father's Day chain, and it's a middle film so I can postpone it, even if I'm not sure I can link to it in June. I guess we'll see...but doing that allows me to add THIS one, which was never part of the plan until right now. It's just going to help me land that birthday tomorrow.
Maisie Williams carries over from "iBoy".
THE PLOT: A widowed New Orleans architect strikes up an unlikely relationship with a teenage runaway.
AFTER: I'm not sure why I feel so ambivalent about this film, it's partially because I just dropped it in at the last minute, I had no plans to watch it so therefore no time to anticipate it or look forward to it, whereas with any other typical film I've got usually about two or three weeks to prepare for it, therefore I'm ready when it screens and I'm kind of got a vested interest in enjoying it. But I'm really finding it hard to care about this one, is that just because I sprung it on myself or is it because the plot really comes in out of left field and doesn't seem to have a consistent purpose to it?
We do get somewhat invested in the marriage of Henry and Penny, like she seems a bit out there but she clearly loves and supports her husband, while also being a bit wacky and able to keep him on his toes. It's fine, because it seems like he's looking forward to spending the next 20 or 30 years just trying to figure her out. She's also eight months pregnant, so yeah, everything's about to change. But she also does weird things like throw out his brown loafers, just because they're brown loafers and instead buys him purple sneakers which he feels a little funny about wearing to the office. But, yeah, sure, they're bold. All I know is that if I threw out a pair of my wife's shoes without telling her, my days would certainly be numbered. Just saying.
But then everything changes, while Henry is at a ceremony dedicating a plot of land as part of his company's plan to redevelop New Orleans, he gets word that Penny has died in a car crash. (At first it seems like she drove into an oncoming truck, but later we learn she crashed into a tree, maybe after avoiding the truck?). Naturally this sends Henry into a personal tail-spin, after the funeral he can't seem to get anything done, the house renovations seem meaningless and he can't bring himself to submit Penny's obituary to the paper, and forget work, it also seems futile. But for some reason he remembers the promise he made to his wife, that if he saw that teen girl come around and pick through their trash again, he should try and help her. So that's what he does, even though the girl doesn't really want any "help".
But Henry persists, and he finds out the girl lives with her abusive uncle, ever since her father died, and for some reason she wants to build a raft that will carry her across the ocean to the Azores. Terrible idea, she'd have to go around Florida, the long way, and probably too close to Cuba, too. But I guess the prevailing current would be in her favor, just why not Bermuda or any of the nice islands in the Caribbean? Let's put a pin in that one and revisit it later.
Meanwhile Penny's mother keeps coming around to bother Henry, she wants to put Penny's ashes in the family cemetery, but he would prefer to keep them in the cubic urn he designed. Henry's got a special skill for building things, which could come in handy if someone were, say, trying to build a raft. But Millie, the girl, doesn't trust him yet, and she needs to know that he's not a perv, also she's never really had anyone looking out for her before - it's going to take time.
Millie does have the journal that her father kept when he sailed off on a raft, and over the course of the film, she relates stories to the audience of other people who dropped out of society in similar fashion, including the famous Thor Heyerdahl, who proved what could be done with his simple raft, the Kon-Tiki, and somehow there's a message here about how people keep making simple problems complicated and calling that progress. The simple answer to life's problems, therefore, seems to be just nailing some planks together and loading up your raft and sailing away to somewhere else. Why stay in one place and solve your current problems when you can start fresh on a tropical island somewhere, or possibly die in the process of getting there? Either way, your old personal problems will be gone! What could possibly go wrong?
That's, umm, that's not a great message for the kids out there. When life gets you down, build a raft? Can't you just move to Nevada or the Carolinas or something and find a new line of work? But no, Henry keeps remembering his wife's advice to "Be Bold" so whatever it takes, robbing a junkyard for parts, or tearing down the beams of the house to build the raft, it seems like once he gets the rafting bug, too, there's no stopping him. Unfortunately we never really find out the result of him enabling Millie's fantasy and going on the grand adventure with her, they do sail off across the Atlantic but the film ends and leaves us wondering about their fates. Well, if the film can't be bothered to tell me then I won't bother to care, sorry.
I've been to New Orleans, we were there about a week before Halloween in 2018. (It's still going to be a while before I post the pics on Instagram, I'm still sorting through 2011.). It's a fine-enough town, we took a haunted city tour and went to the city museum, which was half devoted to Hurricane Katrina and the other half was Mardi Gras fashions and floats. We gambled in a riverboat casino and enjoyed the buffet there, but I was unimpressed by the food that New Orleans people are always raving about - gumbo, crawfish etouffé and muffaletta were a hard pass. Red beans and rice was fine, but you know, it's just red beans and rice. I did have a shrimp po'boy that excited me, but that was about it, apart from the beignets. I know every city thinks they have the best food in the country, I just think the fine people of New Orleans are delusional. Sorry.
In a similar fashion, clearly someone felt this was an important story to tell, which is why they made the film, and I'm just going to have to disagree. There's just nothing really thrilling going on here, it just feels like the raft, cobbled together from pieces and parts that were never meant to fit together. Will it even float?
Directed by Bill Purple (assistant director on "Georgia Rule" and "13 Going on 30")
Also starring Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise"), Jessica Biel (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "The Discovery"), Orlando Jones (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Richard Robichaux (last seen in "Hit Man"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Bryan Batt (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Jayson Warner Smith (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Christopher Gehrman (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Wendy Miklovic (last seen in "Grudge Match"), George Wilson (last seen in "Cleaner"), Josh Mikel (last seen in "Renfield"), Russ Russo, Cailey Fleming (last seen in "IF"), Darnekia Dowl, Natalie Mejer, Sheldon Frett (last seen in "Get on Up"), Madeleine Woolner (last seen in "The Upside"), Ian Belgard
RATING: 4 out of 10 Scrabble tiles
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