a few nights ago, i saw "margot at the wedding," the new noah baumbach film. any longtime readers of this blog will know how i feel about the squid and the whale, and so they will know with what expectations i walked into the theater. the times' review had rated the film mediocre, but still commented that it was a more mature squid and the whale. so i figured whatever flaws it might have, i would most likely still enjoy it tremendously. i think i miscalculated two factors. first, that just because i loved another noah baumbach movie, did not mean that i would love this one; on the contrary, it meant that i would be more likely to be let down. and second, how bad the movie is.
i mean, it wasn't terrible. but two of the four lead characters were horrifically miscast, to the serious detriment of the film. the first, nicole kidman, gave a decent performance, but her constant attempts to do a jewish accent made her sound ridiculous. it's like i said when ScoJo tried to go jewish in that woody allen movie, some people can simply never be convincing jews. and then jack black was quite lovable for most of the movie, but the dramatic climax of the film fell on him, and he could not deliver. in a scene where he is supposed to be crying his heart out, it was hard not to snicker. i guess its not his fault really, but he just couldn't stop being jack black.
oh, the other problem was that the lead character was an unsympathetic bitch. i mean really, every time she spoke you kind of wanted to slap her. and i guess another reason that i disliked the film was that unlike the squid and the whale, it deals with a crisis experienced by someone at an age i have not yet reached, so it didn't have any resonance with me, whatsoever. oh well. i'm kind of hungover and it's thanksgiving, so i'm gonna stop now.