Originally published on Facebook 25 October 2014.
Today’s totally paint-by-the-numbers-film seen theatrically: THE JUDGE, with Robert Duvall, Robert Downey Jr., Vincent Donofrio, Billy Bob Thorton, and Vera Farmiga all playing parts they could have performed in their sleep, acting out deep years of family epiphanies that play out exactly as you might have expected; a Lifetime movie with overqualified actors, worth watching only because of those overqualified actors.
It’s not terrible. The story plays out predictably, but it plays out well. There are just no surprises in it, at any time, not even down to the last scene.
One of the lighter subplots has Downey meet up with Vera Farmiga, the sweet girl who he left behind after high school (and who is conveniently still available); in the meantime he meets and makes out with a cute barmaid who he LATER finds out is Farmiga’s daughter.
Very uncomfortable, right? Especially after he gets interested in Farmiga again and does the back-dating. Could it be…? Did he make out with…?
Okay, so Farmiga finally takes pity on him on tells him, no, she’s not your daughter, I had a one-nighter with your older brother after you left town.
SO HE ONLY MADE OUT WITH HIS NIECE.
He is soooo relieved.
He actually is.
But the worst issue about the movie is that it’s made to spoon-feed its audience.
I I gotta tell ya, if I ever again wonder aloud how come people make movies like this and don’t realize how UTTERLY and TOTALLY hackneyed they are, then remind me of my experience in the theatre today, in which:
Robert Downey Jr. plays a hotshot attorney who learns that his mother has died. Further dialogue establishes that he is estranged from his father, the judge. He takes a plane to the town he comes from, shows up at the funeral home, strokes his mother’s hand where she lies in state, is greeted and hugged by his two brothers, who talk about “Mom” and “Dad”; he exchanges stiff greetings with Robert Duvall; he goes to clean out his old room at Robert Duvall’s place; the two stars exchange more mutual resentment; he tries to bitch to his brother D’Onofrio about his resentment of Dad and his brother tells him, not now….
…and hand to God, after all that, almost half an hour in, somebody behind me says, “Wait a minute, Robert Duvall’s supposed to be his Dad?”
One reason movies like this are built around easy-to-summarize epiphanies: to many audiences, EVEN THE SIMPLEST LOGICAL LEAPS ARE TOO HARD TO MAKE.
Or must be carefully explained to one another.
When I saw ALL IS LOST, there was a scene where a freighter appears on the horizon, and draws closer, and over the course of long minutes comes to dominate the screen, and finally passes by close enough to read the labels on the cargo containers, and the fuck sitting in front of me helpfully explained to his wife, “It’s a ship.”
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