Uncle Buck

 Uncle Buck (1989)

Starring John Candy, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macauley Culkin, Gaby Hoffman, Amy Madigan, and Laurie Metcalf

Directed by John Hughes

Written by John Hughes

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C-

Movie Review - Obvious Child

Obvious Child (2014)

Starring Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Gabe Liedman, Richard Kind, Polly Draper, and David Cross

Directed by Gillian Robespierre  

***This film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime***

Quite frankly, more so than probably any other movie released in 2014, Obvious Child was not made for me.  I'm not one that can find humor in a young stand-up comic going on stage and doing a set where she tries to derive humor from the fact that she's getting an abortion the next day.  I won't sit here and say I was offended (because I wasn't because quite frankly very little Hollywood does could offend me nowadays), but I did find the film a bit disturbing in the way it attempts to bring humor to such a situation.

Jenny Slate is Donna, a twenty something gal who, after being dumped by her long-time boyfriend, has a one night stand with Max (Jake Lacy) which results in her getting pregnant.  Without a steady job (her stand-up comedy side gigs don't bring in much income) and having just been told that her cheap apartment is being taken away from her, there's no second guessing as to what Jenny is going to do -- an abortion is to be had.

I give writer-director Gillian Robespierre credit for having the cojones to make a film so bluntly pro-abortion, but from a comedy standpoint, the humor didn't fly for me here.  I laughed out loud once or twice and Slate actually has a presence that's oddly charming in a rough-around-the-edges kind of way, but the subject matter here is such a turn-off to me that I doubt I was ever going to enjoy this one.  When I watch movies, I try my best to separate my political and moral views from what I'm watching onscreen and I think I'm damn good at it.  However, I can't find humor in the subject of abortion.  It's simply not going to fly with me.  Seeing a mother and daughter waxing fondly over the mother's tale about an abortion she had in the sixties is nothing short of unsettling for me when placed in a humorous context.

Once again, credit for being ballsy enough to appeal to the liberal mindset with this one (and the media naturally fawned over it upon its release), but this one just didn't fly with me when it comes to the comedic boundaries it's pushing.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Wild

Wild (2014)

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann, and Thomas Sadoski

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

To begin this review of Wild, I'm going to quote a line from my review of Dallas Buyers Club, a film also directed by Jean-Marc Vallée which went on to win several Academy Awards last year:

"Dallas Buyers Club doesn't have the emotional arcs I want in a film like this.  The film doesn't drive its story forward in such a way that feels exciting or impacting."

Unfortunately, that's the same way I feel about Wild, the true story of Cheryl Strayed, a young woman who, after the death of her mother steered her down a path of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuous sex hurting her caring husband in the process, decides to hike solo the 1,100 mile  Pacific Crest Trail in order to find peace within herself.  Vallée's two recent works simply fail to elicit the emotional impact that their hefty stories should deliver.  Something's missing from Vallée's work and despite his more than adequate visual style, Wild left me feeling empty.

Part of the issue with Wild is its desire to tell a huge chunk of its emotional core in flashback.  The film opens with Cheryl beginning her trek across the West Coast, only allowing us brief puzzle piece-like flashbacks of what got Cheryl to this point in her life.  As the viewers piece together the flashbacks, I found myself frustrated by two things.  First, the flashbacks are very fragmented seemingly in an attempt to not clue the viewer in on everything right away.  Yes, I know the screenwriter may say they're fragmented because Cheryl's mind was wandering as she wandered the trail, but the disjointed nature of the flashbacks proved frustrating to me in part because I felt like they were trying to "hide" key aspects of Cheryl's life until pivotal moments in the hiking portion of her story.  Piggybacking off of that, the second issue is that although they attempted to keep portions of her past secret, it was incredibly easy to infer what had happened, so if any of these hidden aspects of her past were supposed to be a surprise emotionally, they weren't in the slightest.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with these flashbacks and the way they were set up is that they failed to create an emotional arc for the character.  Tossing scenes in seemingly willy-nilly didn't allow for the audience to latch on to Cheryl's admittedly painful early twenties during which she found herself in much turmoil.  Adding to this, Cheryl is a smart cookie.  She's well educated and quite knowledgeable about literature and the arts.  This causes her, in the film's pivotal moments, to speak almost too poetically for her own good.  I will admit, this is more a fault of mine than the film's, but I found myself zoning out whenever she waxed eloquently about a poet or an author.

Reese Witherspoon is good, appearing in every scene of the film, but as I said, I didn't find myself connecting with her character.  I don't think that's a fault of hers, but rather the script and the directing, but I found myself wishing I could've liked her role more.

Despite my qualms, Wild isn't a bad film -- neither was Dallas Buyers Club, for that matter.  Both are just missing that emotional connection that quite frankly should come without question in films like these.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+