My opinion exactly. And a lot of good acting wasted (although I’ve seen Arkin do his deadpan cranky nutcase shtick a half a dozen times too many).
But, so what?
Was Superman trying too hard to be the Comic book mega-hit of the year?
Was Silent Hill trying too hard to be the gore-thriller of the year?
Was Invincible trying too hard to be the redemption-through-sports movie of the year?
Props indeed to any movie that completely breaks convention to get out on it’s own, but why would anyone choose to criticize LMS about it instead of any other movie.
I mean, it’s not like a movie with Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette and Alan Arkin was trying to sneak under the radar, or trying to be the next “Big Fat Greek Wedding” or something. Why hold it to a different standard?
It was just a funny roadtrip movie. It had a lot more going for it than “National Lampoons Family Vacation”, and was a lot more entertaining the “The Royal Tenenbaums” or “The Squid and the Whale” – two movies you could level the same criticism against.
We take our funny little roadtrip movies a bit too seriously, don’t we?
Still, Trunk, I’ll attempt to answer the question. However, I was just agreeing with Push You Down, so I don’t know why poor, never-harms-anybody me is getting singled out.
Anyway, I also agree with jackelope’s critique. What happens with me is, when I feel that the movie makers are trying too hard to accomplish something, I just shut down. It’s a purely subjective judgement; my wife thought LMS was really good. I thought it was painfully contrived.
I criticized LMS because, as you may recall, you made it the subject of this thread.
I don’t understand the thing about “The Squid and the Whale” and “The Royal Tennenbaums” comes from. I thought both those movies sucked ass. I have yet to see anything with Wes Anderson’s name on it that doesn’t. But what do they, or “Invincible,” or “Superman,” or “Silent Hill,” have to do with “Little Miss Sunshine?”
It was a bit predictable but overall a great movie. I enjoyed it and I don’t normally like this sort of thing.
I wasn’t singling you out for any other reason than your post was still on the screen when I was quoting, but I was really addressing PYD’s point.
The point was just that singling out the movie for trying to be “too much like <insert genre here>” isn’t, to me, a valid criticism. It’s criticizing what someone deems the movie “trying to be” rather than criticizing the movie.
On one level that’s fine. You’re never going to be a truly GREAT movie unless you can really transcend a “type”.
But, we tend judge 99% of movies based on whether or not they fail at what they’re trying to do. I don’t understand why anyone would single out LMS on that level.
That’s all my point was: if LMS sucked as a quirky-character road trip movie, that’s one thing. If you want to write it off for tryng to be a quirky-character road trip movie, then what movie CAN’T you write off as trying to be <insert genre here>? You’re going to be left with 8½.
What we have here is failure to communicate. At least, I think that’s it. When I say that LMS is trying to hard, I’m not saying it’s trying to hard to be part of a certain genre, in this case, a comedic road movie. It clearly is a comedic road movie.
I’d better go for a spoiler box here.
What I’m saying is that the individual parts of the movie feel contrived, or forced. Very little works smoothly, so it’s hammered home by repetition. Grandpa as a heroin addict doesn’t work. There’s no way I can believe this guy’s a heroin addict, and whether he is or not, the incongruity doesn’t work: it’s neither funny, nor instructive, nor revealing. Steve Carell does good job with his character, but the Proust scholar thing doesn’t get funnier with repetition. Neither does the failed motivational speaker subplot; in fact, that just becomes pathetic. And the beauty contest? We’re to believe that perfectly normal looking girl is going to end up on that stage? That a child is not going to notice the difference between herself and the others, and freak out? That the tired plot device of a tasteless routine is really going to happen here: grandpa’s really that stupid, and no parent has ever seen the routine? To me, they’re just setting up impossible situations, which they want the audience to believe are at least somewhat plausible, in order to try to force a joke out of them. But the jokes just don’t land.
I’m not saying the movie sucks. I did get a few chuckles out of it, and I really did enjoy everyone’s performances except Arkin’s. I just think it’s a measure of how thin the gruel is out there in movieland when this is being considered one of the best movies of the year.
I agree completely with kelly5078’s post. And as for this:
You’re totally missing my point. I love Roadrunner cartoons, and I loved The Squid and the Whale, too; it’s when a movie tries to shift gears between “this is a slapstick farce” and “this is a serious exploration of dysfunctional family dynamics” that it simply doesn’t work; these are totally different levels of relating to a movie.
If it had just been a road-trip comedy, that could have worked. If it had just been a resolving-family-issues thing, that could have worked. In fact, if they had just toned down the zany-factor in the comic bits, it still might have worked.
Mashing them together like that, though, was like putting Froot Loops in my Beef Stroganoff; it ruins two things that could work great independently.
It’s not a generational thing. It’s a Your Parents Don’t Like A Lot Of Good Movies thing. Their age has nothing to do with it.
What other quirky indie movies do you think suck ass? I need to check them out.
Another filmgoer who was a bit surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to this film. My friend and I actually turned to one another several times throughout the thing with a ‘Whaa?’ look while the rest of the theatre howled with laughter. I thought Carell, Arkin and the little girl (especially the little girl) were fab, but all in all the writing was weak and the premise was wasted. I’m glad people enjoyed something that wasn’t a shoot em up (oh god, that sounds so pretentious), especially since it really was the little film that could from the business end of things (just look at the continuity- wigs and all), but agree with most of what jackelope wrote. It’s a bit like when **American Beauty ** came out and people were freaking out about how risque it was while others just shrugged an pointed to Happiness.
As with any film, I suppose one has to be in the mood for it. I’ve seen films in the past that I hated the first time around, but enjoyed later. It helped with this one that I didn’t read any of the hype, nor did I have any idea what the premise was prior to seeing it. If I had had prior knowledge of the VW bit, it wouldn’t have been nearly as hysterical to me.