Solondz has done it again. Usually when you hear that, it's a good thing. It is rather telling that Solondz is harshest to characters that reflect the people that are most likely to see his movies, and gives essentially a free pass to those that he constantly claims should like his movies just as much, those from flyoverville. In this one, Ellen Barkin calls a baby a "tumor" and talks about getting an abortion like it was fun. On the other side, Mama Sunshine, while her zeal makes her a caricature to be scorned by the hip or at least people with some sense of self-perception, is a decent, loving and caring person, even if her husband has doctors killed.
Many of the reviews say that the story bogs down when Aviva leaves home. No, the story doesn't take off until then. The parent characters are the same stupid borderline anti-Semitic stereotypes shown in his crappy "Storytelling." Richard Masur doesn't have a character at all.
As for direction, the first Aviva and almost all of the kids in the Mama Sunshine camp speak all their lines as if they're reading them off cue cards. This has the feel of being intentional, like they're supposed to sound as manufactured as if they are in a TV show, but it just doesn't work.
The main word to describe Solondz is "disingenuous." He looks out at the camera in the new Time Out spread with those creepy James Spader eyes and talks about how much he feels for his character; or in NYTimes about how children in his movies are treated with dignity. Dignity. He purposely films each actress in the most unflattering way he can so they are actively unpleasant to look at. The camera lovingly caresses the gut of the "Judah" Aviva, the redhead is almost always shot from just looking up her nose and catching her buck teeth, and I'm sure the boy is a star in the locker room now.
Honestly, without Debra Monk this movie would be as bad as "Storytelling" (and that's pretty bad), but she just has such heart and conviction that you really start buying into the story. Up until that point you are much better off renting "Citizen Ruth" or reading the play "Keely and Du" by Jane Martin. The disabled kids are made fun of by giving them pseudo-brady bunch dialogue, but the satire here A) isn't funny and B)has no teeth. Peter Paul is a fine creation, but the rest of them really are just being exploited for the sake of being exploited, and the only joke that lands is the only one he doesn't make out loud (that the blonde kid that can dance is there to be cured of the happies).
The grave pronouncement made by characters, and we're always supposed to know they're being made by unreliable narrators, are just silly baiting. Most of the dialogue is written that way. The actual film gets rolling when Stephen Adly Guirgis and one of the better Avivas play Bonnie and Clyde, from then on it is bearable with the exception of a short repast back to snipe at Ellen Barkin's character again.
It is uncanny, this guy really just can't get enough of making fun of Jews. Julie Hagerty and John Goodman, the least Jewish people in the world, in Storytelling, aside from whoever played Scooby, and her with the Aleph-Bet t-shirt on. I don't care if he's Jewish and wanted to be a rabbi, the worst thing about his relentless mocking of Jews is the fact that his jokes about them are NOT FUNNY. You can get away with a lot just by being funny, and Solondz found that out back when he made Happiness because back then he was funny.
"Fear, Anxiety and Depression" is overrated as a cult movie, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is overrated as a significant movie, "Happiness" is the only film he has made that lives up to the hype and it would be a masterpiece if he didn't himself seem not to get it and only to mis-learn from it that offensive is insightful. His films since seem like the Alanis Morrissette song "Ironic" where nothing that she says is actually ironic. In Happiness the characters were incredibly, sometimes fatally flawed, but tragically unavoidably sympathetic. In Storytelling and this one they are, other than one or two of the Avivas, Debra Monk and Stephen Guirgis, just stupid and one-dimensional. It's like he's telling you with a sneer that he's created a perfect paradox, and he obviously hasn't. This is what he has done with the Ellen Barkin character, putting arguments she would never use into her mouth to make her artificially ridiculous.
He also does not adequately explain something: we see the film almost entirely from Aviva's perspective, and she ostensibly hears that she can't get pregnant again. Is the way she keeps trying because she knows but is trying anyway, hoping for a miracle? Or did he not adequately explain that we saw that and understood it but she didn't? Anyway, the Jesus band is a really easy shot but that segment is probably the strongest, and makes the entire movie bearable.
As for having all of the different actresses it might have been better to have one GOOD actress, then we wouldn't have had to twiddle our thumbs for segments at a time.
Did I mention "Storytelling" stunk? And I'd like to smack him for bringing "Belle and Sebastian" all the way over just for that.
Many of the reviews say that the story bogs down when Aviva leaves home. No, the story doesn't take off until then. The parent characters are the same stupid borderline anti-Semitic stereotypes shown in his crappy "Storytelling." Richard Masur doesn't have a character at all.
As for direction, the first Aviva and almost all of the kids in the Mama Sunshine camp speak all their lines as if they're reading them off cue cards. This has the feel of being intentional, like they're supposed to sound as manufactured as if they are in a TV show, but it just doesn't work.
The main word to describe Solondz is "disingenuous." He looks out at the camera in the new Time Out spread with those creepy James Spader eyes and talks about how much he feels for his character; or in NYTimes about how children in his movies are treated with dignity. Dignity. He purposely films each actress in the most unflattering way he can so they are actively unpleasant to look at. The camera lovingly caresses the gut of the "Judah" Aviva, the redhead is almost always shot from just looking up her nose and catching her buck teeth, and I'm sure the boy is a star in the locker room now.
Honestly, without Debra Monk this movie would be as bad as "Storytelling" (and that's pretty bad), but she just has such heart and conviction that you really start buying into the story. Up until that point you are much better off renting "Citizen Ruth" or reading the play "Keely and Du" by Jane Martin. The disabled kids are made fun of by giving them pseudo-brady bunch dialogue, but the satire here A) isn't funny and B)has no teeth. Peter Paul is a fine creation, but the rest of them really are just being exploited for the sake of being exploited, and the only joke that lands is the only one he doesn't make out loud (that the blonde kid that can dance is there to be cured of the happies).
The grave pronouncement made by characters, and we're always supposed to know they're being made by unreliable narrators, are just silly baiting. Most of the dialogue is written that way. The actual film gets rolling when Stephen Adly Guirgis and one of the better Avivas play Bonnie and Clyde, from then on it is bearable with the exception of a short repast back to snipe at Ellen Barkin's character again.
It is uncanny, this guy really just can't get enough of making fun of Jews. Julie Hagerty and John Goodman, the least Jewish people in the world, in Storytelling, aside from whoever played Scooby, and her with the Aleph-Bet t-shirt on. I don't care if he's Jewish and wanted to be a rabbi, the worst thing about his relentless mocking of Jews is the fact that his jokes about them are NOT FUNNY. You can get away with a lot just by being funny, and Solondz found that out back when he made Happiness because back then he was funny.
"Fear, Anxiety and Depression" is overrated as a cult movie, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is overrated as a significant movie, "Happiness" is the only film he has made that lives up to the hype and it would be a masterpiece if he didn't himself seem not to get it and only to mis-learn from it that offensive is insightful. His films since seem like the Alanis Morrissette song "Ironic" where nothing that she says is actually ironic. In Happiness the characters were incredibly, sometimes fatally flawed, but tragically unavoidably sympathetic. In Storytelling and this one they are, other than one or two of the Avivas, Debra Monk and Stephen Guirgis, just stupid and one-dimensional. It's like he's telling you with a sneer that he's created a perfect paradox, and he obviously hasn't. This is what he has done with the Ellen Barkin character, putting arguments she would never use into her mouth to make her artificially ridiculous.
He also does not adequately explain something: we see the film almost entirely from Aviva's perspective, and she ostensibly hears that she can't get pregnant again. Is the way she keeps trying because she knows but is trying anyway, hoping for a miracle? Or did he not adequately explain that we saw that and understood it but she didn't? Anyway, the Jesus band is a really easy shot but that segment is probably the strongest, and makes the entire movie bearable.
As for having all of the different actresses it might have been better to have one GOOD actress, then we wouldn't have had to twiddle our thumbs for segments at a time.
Did I mention "Storytelling" stunk? And I'd like to smack him for bringing "Belle and Sebastian" all the way over just for that.