Everybody does a decent job in 'Infinitely Polar Bear' except for the screenwriter, who never develops a genuine narrative arc for her film. After a brief introduction which depicts the mental breakdown of an ex-Harvard student called Cameron, a couple of minutes are spent glossing over the period he spends in institutional care, while his wife Maggie struggles to raise their two young daughters as a single mother.
The story begins for real after Cameron is released and starts living in a halfway house in the Boston suburbs. When Maggie is accepted into an MBA program in New York, she asks him to take over housekeeping and parenting duties while she's absent, and Cameron moves back into the family home with their children. Unfortunately the threesome's chaotic life together is portrayed with a limited palette. The film soon develops a enervating tedium as it rolls out a repetitive sequence of similar scenes documenting how the two girls cope with their father's mood fluctuations. This shortcoming is exacerbated as writer/director Forbes depicts only the surface symptoms of Cameron's mental condition, and offers a formulaic feel-good resolution at the end. Manic depression deserves something better than this glib treatment.
The story begins for real after Cameron is released and starts living in a halfway house in the Boston suburbs. When Maggie is accepted into an MBA program in New York, she asks him to take over housekeeping and parenting duties while she's absent, and Cameron moves back into the family home with their children. Unfortunately the threesome's chaotic life together is portrayed with a limited palette. The film soon develops a enervating tedium as it rolls out a repetitive sequence of similar scenes documenting how the two girls cope with their father's mood fluctuations. This shortcoming is exacerbated as writer/director Forbes depicts only the surface symptoms of Cameron's mental condition, and offers a formulaic feel-good resolution at the end. Manic depression deserves something better than this glib treatment.