Just saw this movie and I can’t decide: Brilliant surreal exploration of abuse and forgiveness and it’s limits or overblown pretentious crap. I’m leaning toward the former, though when I started I had my doubts. Judging from the customer reviews on Netflix this movie rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
What do you think?
I loved it. I like it more and more each time I watch it. I like the performances, I like the characters (well, as far as one can like that bunch), I adore the soundtrack, and well, I think it’s great. The only thing I dislike is the stories at the beginning–amazing but true!–which are all a bunchof stupid urban legends and the point didn’t really need to be made. I’m sure the audience would have understood that they were all connected and affected each other to some extent without the repeated hammering over the head at the beginning.
I am a big fan.
I think of it more as an opera more than as a movie. I enjoyed the intertwining themes about relationships between fathers and their children and the final bizarre ending where reality, stranger than fiction, snaps these people back to the world and changes their lives.
It’s both very good AND exasperating! I mean, on the whole, I loved it, but I always have to think long and hard before I recommend it to people I know… because many people who see it will say, “Geez, Astorian, that movie was ridiculous. What the hell were you thinking???”
And, much as I liked the film, I’ll know exactly what they mean!
I loved it. It was one of the only movies I’ve ever seen that I feel actually touched my life. I know it’s long and not for everyone, but to me, it’s absolutely brilliant and rings true to how people really are and the way they relate. Beautiful film.
I think it’s three hours of my life I will never have back. Three hours I could have doing something useful and entertaining, like scooping the catbox and then arranging the turds and urine clumps into objets d’art. It was the most monumentally boring movie I have ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen some real snorers. It was so horrible that when it started raining frogs, my only reaction was “Oh thank God, surely that means it’s nearly over. Finally.” Seriously, if I’d been alone, I would have walked out an hour or more before it ended.
I gave it a fair chance, I really did. Based on the trailers and the reviews and the first ten minutes or so, I thought it was going to be the best cinematic experience of the year. But no. It had so little to command my attention that I noticed the exact second my ass started to fall asleep. (My butt almost always falls asleep in long movies, but I almost never notice until the end, because I’m too caught up in the story. If I notice that my butt’s asleep before the credits, you’re losing me. If I notice when my butt falls asleep, you’ve lost me and it’s going to take a miracle to get me back.) There were indeed some very good performances, but I saw most of the good stuff in the trailers. I didn’t give a shit about the stories, and I didn’t give a shit about the people. You can get by with a shitty plot if you’ve got great characters; Stephen King’s been doing it for years. You can get by with shitty characters if you’ve got a great plot; action movies have been doing it for years. But if you can’t have a shitty plot and shitty characters and have anything but shit.
It’s one of my favorite movies… even though I’m not sure why.I don’t usually go for complex heartwrenching family dramas.
Maybe I love it for the same reasons I love Moulin Rouge and Gangs of New York. They’re all such bravura, shamelessly extravagent pieces of filmmaking.
I hate it. I really, really hate it. I honestly don’t think it has a single redeeming quality. It’s long, boring, pretentious as all get out, and incredibly pompous. Most of my friends love it, but it’s one of my most hated movies ever.
This is very much my own reaction. I think it’s inspiring and exhilarating filmmaking, but I also think that what it’s about, and how it’s about it, is rather too abstruse for the mainstream viewer. As much as anything, I’m amazed (in a wonderful way) that such an odd film even exists in today’s lowest-common-denominator moviemaking climate.
I feel the same way! I wonder if that means anything…
[Ricky Jay voiceover]“Surely… this is not… simply… a matter of chance.”[/Ricky Jay]
I absolutely love the way Paul Thomas Anderson was willing to go for broke with such an bold production. So many movies are afraid of embarrassment and shield themselves with an ironic detachment and a wink to the camera. But there is nothing timid about Magnolia, it is absolutely a film that’s not afraid to completely put itself out there and go for broke both emotionally and visually, and I think it succeeds wonderfully.
Anderson has a real eye for dramatic visuals, and everything from the restless camera to the use of editing make for a sumptuous visual feast.
I would go on, but Roger Ebert sums up my view of this movie so well I can’t help but quote him:
I loved this movie. And I have no idea why. Usually, I’m pretty articulate and can explain exactly why a movie did or did not effect me, or at least come up with a reasonably convincing line of bullshit. Magnolia has me stumped. I loved it… just because I loved it.
Also, it turned me on to Aimee Mann, who is now one of my top five favorite musicians currently not dead. The rest of the movie could have been Battlefield: Earth, and I would forgive it for this alone.
I enjoyed Magnolia, but I can see where it can rub people the wrong way.
I’m hoping this won’t spoil the movie for anyone, but the part that bugged me was the rain of frogs bit with the kid saying “this is real. this is what happens.” Knocked me right out of the story and I never got back into it. I like everything before and after, but that part just seems so pointless and possibly pretentious. The beginning sequence (suicide or homicide) bothers me for the same reason.
I’m a sucker for a good story that is well acted and well directed. The two moments I gave serve only as distractions.
Overall, I thought it was a mixed bag. 5/10
My wife and I looked at each other about 20 minutes into the movie and said at the same time, “You can turn this off if you want to.” We wanted to.
Oh, right, the urban legend opener. I think this is why I was disliking the movie at the beginning. I can’t believe they used The diver in the tree story, which has been roundly debunked. Also I thought the movie was going to be all about freakish coincidences like “Did you know Lincoln had A secretary named Kennedy and etc, etc.” Then the scat version of One is the Loneliest Number came on, which was annoying. But the connections between the carachters in the movie were much more mundane, believable and poignant than the urban legend opening would have led you to believe. And the music improved. So I started out not liking the movie but as the story moved on I got pretty involved with it and I thought the end was beautiful. That puts things in perspective. I’ll have to watch it again, I guess, though not right away.
One other thing that made it hard for me was that I have a few hysterical people in my family and the screaming scenes brought up some bad memories. YMMV, of course.
I can’t decide how I feel about this movie. For every part I liked, there was a part I hated.
I hated the John C. Reilly character (the cop) and his relationship with Claudia.
I liked the Tom Cruise character, how he was a scumbag and thought he was hot stuff. But he has real feelings too! Awww… But mainly I liked how he was such a slimeball.
I hated the Thurston Howell guy at the bar.
I loved Julianne Moore telling the pharmacy kid to “suck [her] dick”.
I hated the situation with Stanley, and his dad being a jerk, and how he peed his pants, but I only hated it because it made me so damn sad.
I liked the Philip Seymour Hoffman character.
I hated how they all sang along to “Wise Up”. I personally didn’t get anything out of it, and it just made the movie longer.
I’ve only seen this movie once. I keep meaning to watch it again, but it’s so long and I can’t bring myself to spend 3 hours sitting in front of the TV again.
This movie completely polarises people. Love it or hate it, there’s no in-between. I expected to hate it, and I loved it. “I am quietly judging you.” is one of my all-time favourite lines.
I saw it eight times in the theater and bought it the day it came out on DVD. This Thread has me wanting to discuss Robert Elswit’s photography, but rather than hijack I’ve started a new Thread.
I think it’s definitely both. 
It’s amazing that so many people jock it or hate it because it’s “pretentious” - as someone who sat through the entire The Cremaster Cycle in one afternoon, I must have a different yardstick for pretense. Of course, I’m a bit of a cinephile, seeking out difficult work.
I loved the Frank T.J. Mackie character - “Seduce and Destroy!” To this day, I can’t help but add “…the piece!” whenever someone says “Denise.”
Still, the Aimee Mann singalong scene was ridiculous. I was irritated enough that the movie seemed to double as an infomercial for her mediocre-at-best music, but when the singalong hit, I wanted to kill someone.
I was also irritated at the film’s conscious “artiness” - while it may impress the average popcorn-munching filmgoer, I just went to an entire Ozu retrospective this summer, so Magnolia’s artsy pretensions were almost as unconvincing as Radiohead’s attemps to convince me that they’re an “experimental” band.
The Tom Cruise character was one of the best in a long time: really reminds you that he is actually a decent talent in addition to being a pretty face. And gay. He was so disgusting and outrageous in the beginning, and then the facade started to fall away throughout the movie. Really well done. I agree on the John C Riely character: just sort of annoying. The William Macy stuff in the bar is just bizarre: I still don’t have much clue what most of it meant or what half the characters were talking about. But the movie definately had some intelligence and power to it, even if it was flawed by pretention and the goofy premise.