The damn frogs. What the hell was the thing with the frogs. Did I miss something? I’m so confused!
I think that would have been a damn fine movie without the frogs and the sing-a-long. But hey, what do I know?
I think they’re alluding to the plague of frogs from the bible. That scene was pretty gross, but I think it could be representative of each person making their full change and a way to make the climax more interesting.
ssskuggiii, you never cease to amaze me.
Notice that at that point in the movie, the fact that frogs are suddenly falling from the sky is not a really big deal to any of the characters. (That was my take, anyway.)
Magnolia was a great movie that was about half an hour too long. They could have cut 30-45 minutes just by trimming scenes that went on too damn long. Otherwise, I really enjoyed it. (I even liked the sing-along.)
Oh, and moderators–could we get a spoiler warning on this thread?
Respect the cock,
Dr. J
I thought the movie was great. YMMV. No matter how weird your life gets, just remember: It could be raining amphibians.
The story’s fiction with a surreal edge. I’m sorry if it wasn’t your cup of tea. I personally like to sit back and accept whatever the filmmaker decides to throw at me. I’ll take Magnolia over any of the garbage mega-films that came out this summer… I can’t remember the last wide-release movie that was really spectacular…
I watched Magnolia last night and I very much liked it. I love a movie where I can discuss the symbolism and metaphors in it.
My opinion? The frogs were a fortean phenomena which can be seen as just “something that happened”. But I, like the narrator from the beginning, think there’s more to it. I’m going with the frogs as a manifestation of the hand of God. I’m working on larger theory. If you want to hear it when I’m done, just let me know. 
What are you talking about? Explain this one to me. I know why I confuse people [which happens quite often], but the amazing them is a new one here.
I didn’t get the frogs either. I didn’t say I didn’t like them, but I still don’t get them.
However, that won’t stop me from offering an opinion on them.
As far as I can figure, it was a not so subtle sign from the director, that this is the point of the movie in which the stories would all gel together. The narrator at the beginning of the movie offered all these stories of coincidence and intertwining lives. I waited the whole movie for all the story lines to come together somehow. I was dissapointed that they didn’t all gel in one weird strange coincidence like in the beginning stories, but I guess that’s what the frogs were for.
But I must admit that my view of the movie is a little skewed - and this is why…
My wife and I attended a late showing of the movie after dinner. I was very tired and fighting off the head droops. Right at the point in the movie where Tom Cruise’s character is crying at his father’s bedside, I kinda, sorta, fell asleep. But not for long, because it was also at that point that a fire alarm went off in the theatre.
Freaked Out? A little. I thought it was some weird gimmick to make the movie even weirder. We all had to evacuate the building, only to find out it was a false alarm. We then were ushered back into the theatre, just in time to see the frogs fall. All in all, it was kinda like a drug trip I once had in college.
Aside from the frog goo being pretty gross, the 30 minutes that could have been cut, and the lame ending, I loved the movie.
I too was waiting for the characters to intertwine since the beginning of the movie as well as the back of the case at the video store hinted that they would. I was expecting more in the lines of Pulp Fiction, not frog-rain.
I still don’t get the purpose of the frogs. It seemed to be a lot of production without enough meaning so it fell flat.
There was another movie that I remember to be similar to this one. I forget the name and who stared in it, but it was also about a number of people whose lives came together (a lot better than Magnolia characters). I remember a cop who was having an affair (maybe?) and also a young mother who made breakfast for her kids and husband while talking dirty on the phone to her phone-sex customers. It seems to me that there was a big ending like the world came to an end or something.
Does anyone remember this movie? I would love to rent it again.
You people, the frog thing was there for a reason, and a damned good one too! It helped to tie the whole thing… nevermind, I’m 17 and I have to explain the points of movie plot to adults? This seems a bit backwards.
There were two signs. One in the audience of the show, the other was a billboard. Both referred to a certain verse in Exodus: the plague of frogs.
IMO, the movie was talking about how much we would like to control our lives, and how little we actually do. If you look, those people would apparently have NO connection with eachother, and yet their lives all connect. The show is the key. The Seduce and Destroy guy’s father, the dying guy, owned the show that the old guy hosted, on which the quiz kids starred and whose wife and daughter he drove out by molesting them and the daughter had a relationship with the cop that found the old quiz kid trying to break back into his job…
Their lives were all connected, each felt some illusion of control over their lives, and in each case they had almost no control. The Seduce guy was driven by feelings created by a father who abandoned him and a mother who died and his whole life revolved around a career of teaching men to control women. His father was dying, couldn’t stop it, didn’t live long enough to make it up to the son he abandoned. His wife (the redhead) tried to kill herself, but failed at that because of the little kid (who the cop knew at the beginning, for ANOTHER connection). The show (that the father owned) was hosted by the old guy, who couldn’t control his impulses, which drove out wife and daughter. The quiz kids had no control over their lives, they were managed by domineering parents (quiz ‘kid’ Donnie didn’t get to keep the money). The cop: lost his gun and was on his knees in the rain crying about it.
The rain of frogs symbolized that shit happens. We have no control over a lot of stuff. If it decides to rain frogs, what the hell are you going to do about it? Get under cover and cower in fear, like daughter and wife (of show host). Be knocked to the ground like Donnie? Laugh at the evidence of your powerlessness and that of others like the young quiz kid? Not notice because of grief and anger, like Mr. Seduce and Destroy?
Diane: The movie you’re thinking of is Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman, adapted from the short stories by Raymond Carver. Tim Robbins plays the cop, plus it’s got Julianne Moore (who was also in Magnolia), Fred Ward, Huey Lewis, Anne Archer, Lyle Lovett, Matt Modine, and a bunch of other people I’m too lazy to go look up on the IMDb. Great movie; the “world-ending” climax you’re thinking of was an earthquake. And yes, this movie is certainly an influence and inspiration on Magnolia.
…Which I thought was flat-out brilliant, one of the best films of 1999. Frogs included.
I’m not going to include a spoiler warning here, because it’s already too late in this thread. However, I’m going to talk about it in some detail, so if you haven’t seen it, you might want to skedaddle. If you’re interested in the film, you can check the link in my sig for my full-length non-spoiler review.
The frog fall is critical to the central theme of the film; it isn’t just some random thing the director threw in because he had a wacky idea or because he needed to wrap up the movie. In fact, the frog fall is subtly hinted at all through the movie. There are several references to the numbers 8 and 2 throughout the first couple of hours; this points to Exodus 8:2, which is about, you guessed it, a rain of frogs. The words “Exodus 8:2” actually appear prominently on a poster shortly before the rain begins. Also, in the background of the bar where William H. Macy moons over the bartender, there’s a stand-up video game: Frogger.
Okay, so what the hell does this mean? Before I go on, let me clarify that this is just my theory; I don’t believe that a well-made film, of which Magnolia is certainly one, can be narrowed down into a simple, easily digested moral. Outstanding films are complex and rich, and reveal depths only upon repeated viewings. Seen The Shining recently? But I digress.
Here’s what I believe: The movie shows us a whole bunch of people who are tied up with their own problems. Almost to a one, their problems are rooted in their past. We hear a number of characters express a variation on the sentiment: “We may be done with the past, but the past isn’t done with us.” This happens over and over. People want to connect (think about the coke addict who desperately wants the cop to ask her out, or the child who just wants his father to love him), but for a variety of reasons, they can’t.
Then it starts raining frogs.
Um, okay, what?
Bear with me here. My take on the film is that it’s a warning against losing perspective, or getting so tied up in your own insignificant concerns that you don’t notice what’s going on. The clues to the impending frog rain are constant throughout the beginning of the movie, if you only know where to look. If you know it’s coming, it’s obvious. If you get distracted by other stuff, you miss it, and then you don’t know what the hell’s going on. Pretty straightforward, no?
So the characters in the movie are caught by their past mistakes, and keep spiraling around their own issues. They have no idea something big is brewing, because they’re blinded by their own problems. They aren’t free to move ahead, they can’t pay attention, they can’t really connect with the world around them. We, as dutiful little moviegoers, watch the Big Movie Stars doing their lines and business, and get blindsided by the frogs as much as the characters in the movie do.
Is this starting to make sense now?
I’m going to quote from my own review (again, see sig) to make another point about the film:
In short, one of the major themes of Magnolia (by no means the only, or even the most significant, theme) is this:
Life’s funny sometimes. Things occasionally just happen, without much rhyme or reason. …And you’d better be ready.
Does this help?
Surgoshan: That was a hell of a simulpost, wasn’t it? Good thing we’re more or less in agreement…
Ooh, I like your explanation too! And that was an interesting simul-post. (No, it doesn’t LOOK like one based on times, but based on length, we probably started similar times).
Thank you for an explanation that I couldn’t get into words that would make sense to anyone else but me.
Magnolia reminded me of a couple of novels by David Foster Wallace. They have several stories going on at the same time, and they’re all connected in some way. The kid sharing the hospital room with the guy who got beat up, who knows the girl who got burned by acid, who dated the brother of the kid whose family owns the tennis academy, etc. And as you start getting close to the end, you just can’t wait for the scene where all these people find out that they know each other.
And it never happens. The story doesn’t end, it just stops. In fact, one of Wallace’s books ends in the middle of a word. It felt like I got cheated out of the last chapter. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the story wasn’t about the big payoff at the end. Nothing in real life ever ends so conveniently. You don’t beat the bad guys, get the girl of your dreams and ride off into the sunset. And even if you did, then what.
Most movies and novels are so slickly told that we don’t realize how much they leave out. I think Magnolia’s about a sort of suspense of randomness. Events don’t build to a climax and denouement, they just build. We got to watch these people for an eventful three hours, but lives stretch backwards and forwards for several decades.
And just what would have happened in Magnolia if all the characters had discovered the coincidences that tied them all together? Someone would have said “Oh, you know my father?” and it wouldn’t have really solved a blessed thing.
If the movie had stopped like a Wallace novel (not ended, just stopped), people would have been furious. I don’t know why it rains, and I don’t know why it’s frogs, but it breaks the tension. It satisfied the audiences need for something to happen, and the director’s desire that nothing be solved.
Thank you Cervaise and Surg for making that movie a hell of a lot more clear. It was like the meaning was dancing in front of me…I could see it, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Now I understand
I am rated as the equal of a professional movie reviewer in reviewing movies!
:: pulls out his list of ‘shit to master’ and puts a check beside ‘reviewing movies’::
I just watched it on video. When the guy held up the “Exodus 8:2” sign in the audience, I looked it up on the Internet, so the frog rain didn’t surprise me.
I’ll tell you, I think it could’ve been a really great movie, like those already mentioned, Pulp Fiction or Short Cuts. But it wasn’t, at least not for me. It was ok, but there was no tying together of anything at the end, and not much of an end anyway. Both the sing-along and the frog hail were lost on me. Oh, and the three urban legends at the beginning didn’t go big with me either. Oh, and cutting an hour or even an hour and a half out of it would’ve been a big improvement as well.
However, there was excellent acting, and good writing. It’s just a shame to see something that could’ve been great be mediocre.
Oh, another thing: Like I say, I looked up the Exodus reference while the movie was playing. I’m kindof into that sort of thing. If it was a really good movie, I probably would’ve disected the kid’s rap as well. But it wasn’t, so I didn’t spend the time. Did anyone else figure out what he was talking about?