The Devil's Double

MPAA  (R) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270262/
Roger Ebert’s Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110803/REVIEWS/110809989

The Devil’s Double (directed by Lee Tamahori, screenplay co-written by Michael Thomas and Latif Yahia, based on the autobiographical book by the same name by Latif Yahia with assistance of Karl Wendl) is about true story of Latif Yahia (played in the movie by Dominic Cooper) who during the regime of Saddam Hussein (played in the movie by Philip Quast) was extracted from the Iraqi military and forced to serve as a body double to Hussein’s psychopathic son Uday (played in the movie by Dominic Cooper as well).

If the totalitarian bosses of recent history were often ruthless and evil, the children of these dictators have often been remembered of being even worse.  In this regard, I would recommend an article by Franklin Foer of Slate Magazine who goes through the sordid stories of the adult children of notorious recent dictators.  Many/most of these children of dictators grew-up to have alcohol and gambling problems as well as _torture and rape_ problems.  Uday Hussein, for example, as head of the Iraqi Olympic Community was said to have tortured the members of Iraq’s national soccer team after losing a qualifying match.  Nicu Ceausescu, son of Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu also had a thing for Olympic athletes, apparently making his rounds of Romania’s medal-winning women’s gymnastics team when “dad” was still in power.  To be sure, Nicu wouldn’t torture the women athletes; he’d just sleep with (rape) them.  It’s generally been “good to be the king” (or the king’s son...).

So then, this is the world that Latif found himself brought into.  Extracted from the front during the Iran-Iraq War by Iraqi intelligence, because it was noted that he looked “a lot like” Uday Hussein, he was given by Uday an offer he could not refuse.  Even though given “a chance to think about it,” that chance Latif found out, was to be taken in the solitude of a prison cell.  Eventually, Latif gave in and after the making of some special dentures (to make his teeth look like Uday's) and apparently a number of minor surgical alterations on his face, voila, Latif got to play Uday for as long as he could stand it / his luck lasted.

What was the life of a “son of a god?”  Well, certainly God or Allah and their various "quaint moral strictures" (like Moslems aren’t supposed to drink alcohol, to say nothing of "thou shalt not kill, covet or commit adultery") didn’t matter for much.  The booze, the coke and the women flowed freely.  At one party in some private club in Baghdad during the lead-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Uday demanded that all his guests “take off their clothes,” and soon enough, male / female, most of the party-goers were naked.  Parents take note: If it wasn’t obvious to you already, this movie _really isn’t_ for the kids.

Uday also had a thing for young brides and even school girls.  Documented was a case where Uday watching a lovely wedding reception at some resort on the outskirts of Baghdad proceeded to come over and take (and soon afterwards rape) the bride.  In the movie, she proceeded to commit suicide, jumping off a balcony onto the wedding reception (still going on) below.  Uday would also drive his Italian sports car around Baghdad looking for teenage school-girls abduct.  Later, he’d have his assistants literally dispose of the bodies in the desert outside of town.

How much can a bystander (or even a forced body-double with a gun to his head) take?  Well when Uday had Latif go out _in his stead_ to talk down a particularly angry parent who had lost a teenage daughter in this way, Latif took out a knife and proceeded to slit his own wrists.  For his attempted suicide, Latif was dumped on the doorsteps of his parents’ home who had not seen or heard from him in 9-years (They had been told that Latif died during the Iran-Iraq War).

But anyone who’s ever watched or read a mafia tale knows that it’s not _that_ easy to leave an “outfit” like this.  The rest of the movie is about Latif’s attempt to "get out of Dodge.”

Perhaps the one difference between a purely mafia outfit and a political one is that other assistants / henchmen in a regime like this do come to have qualms as well.  So Latif does occasionally get some unanticipated help from people that, on the surface, one wouldn’t expect. (This same motif/insight was also present in the recent movie There be Dragons about Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva, set during the chaos and carnage of the Spanish Civil War and it _may_ be worth pursuing/reflecting on this in the future – not everybody associated with an evil regime is necessarily evil and people even in such evil circumstances are capable of unexpected kindness and change).

All in all, The Devil’s Double makes for a viscerally graphic (gold and blood drenched) movie.  Movies like Scarface and Goodfellas as well as the movies of Quentin Tarantino come to mind.  Parents, the R-rating is definitely appropriate and the movie is definitely not for kids / preteens.  Still, The Devil’s Double is mostly historical (Some of the scenes, particularly near the end, feel like they were “adapted” to fit the needs of a telling a compelling and coherent story, much like a criticism that could be made of recent cable television series like The Tudors or The Borgias).  And the story does make note of some of the complexities of the various characters in the story.  Nobody, including Uday or his father, is portrayed completely one-dimensionally. 


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Life in a Day [2011]

MPAA (PG-13) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687247/

Life in a Day (directed by Kevin MacDonald along with Natalia Andreadis and Joseph Michael) is a production sponsored by LG, National Geographic, YouTube and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions which asked people around the world to submit video footage of what they did on a single day, July 24, 2010.  They received thousands of hours of video from people over 190 countries.   This footage was organized into a 95 minute film which showed life across the earth on that day from 12:00 AM (0:00) on that day until 11:59 PM (23:59) that evening. 

The movie does run like an “edited 95 minute collage of YouTube videos from around the world.”  So if you’d like or even be fascinated by something like that, you’d probably enjoy this movie.  If you would find something like that either “too much” or “too boring,” you’ll probably not like it.

Since I’ve done my share in recent years of filming essentially "random" (read "quite simple" or "quite boring" ;-) events in my life, I probably fall in the first group.  I _do_ find value in projects like Life in a Day.  It’s a reminder to us of both the _diversity_ and the _universality_ of our day-to-day experiences.  After all, we _all_ have to get up, wash ourselves up, eat, go to work/school.  We all play or do things for fun.  We all have important events in our lives (though perhaps not every day).  We all have loved ones.  And we fear  various things including perhaps “disappearing” or “not having had mattered.”

So I did find this project and compilation fascinating but I do understand that it wouldn’t be for everybody.


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The Change Up

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (1 ½ stars) Fr. Dennis (0 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1488555/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv086.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110803/REVIEWS/110809994

The Change Up (directed by David Dubkin and cowritten by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) is a movie that I haven’t seen and _don’t_ plan to see because I can not think of any worthwhile reason to do so. 

Why am I bothering to write a review of a movie that I don’t plan to see?  I don’t want a lack of a review in this case to be misconstrued as an endorsement of this movie or movies like it.

Why would I be so particularly negative about _this_ movie as opposed to other more youth oriented movies that are also of questionable value?  I suppose (1) it would depend on the movie in question (if a _really bad_ irredeemable youth oriented movie came out I'd be similarly negative about it), and (2) there often is at least something redeemable in most films, if nothing else offering a opportunity to engage people in some way leading to a more positive truth.  In the case of The Change Up, I don't see _anything positive_. 

Why should an audience be indulged in the fantasy of a married man, Dave (played by Jason Bateman), with a beautiful intelligent wife, Jamie (played by Leslie Mann), who loves him ... to want “more?”  Why should a man, Mitch (played by Ryan Reynolds), who already could enter into a serious relationship with any number of women who seem to be dropping at his feet be allowed to want/have the beautiful intelligent wife of his best friend _as well_? 

Perhaps I’m being kinder to the young than to people closer to my own age, but I simply don’t see why _pay Hollywood_ money indulge in such reckless fantasies.  At 20, one’s life still is an open book, and if one hasn’t yet found someone who one is both friends with and attracted to, then perhaps ‘dream.’  But at 35+, when one is _already married_ or certainly _marriagable_ it becomes pathetic.  You’ve got what you’ve got in life.  USUALLY IT IS REALLY QUITE GOOD and just learn to be happy with what God has given you.  Afterall, the 9th and 10th commandments are:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and
You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.


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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-III) Roger Ebert (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1318514/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv087.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://www.rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110803/REVIEWS/110809988

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (directed by Rupert Wyatt, written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, suggested by the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle) is a surprisingly good update to the Planet of the Apes movie franchise of the 1960s-70s. 

All Sci-Fi stories require a certain degree of “suspension of disbelief.”  I always found the Planet of the Apes franchise to require this to a far larger degree than other popular American Sci-fi.  Yet by the time the closing credits finish here, one has a scenario (with some holes but not as many as one would expect) for both the rise of the apes and the fall of humanity.

So what happens?  Will Rodman (played by James Franco), a scientist who works for a pharmaceutical company named Gensyn is working on a drug that would reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.  The drug, whose delivery mechanism is a virus, introduces a number of genes into brain cells which would encourage them to divide anew and make new synapse connections with other brain cells.  Initial testing on chimps proves promising.  However, the whole project is shut-down after one of the chimps, a female, goes berserk.  The company believes that it is a side-effect of the treatment.  Instead, we find out that it was because she was pregnant.  The head caretaker of the chimps, Robert Franklin (played by Tyler Labine) ordered to take down the chimps because of the failed experiment, can’t bring himself to kill the new-born chimp as well, and asks Will Rodman to take the little chimp home, even for a few days, while he tries to figure out what to do.  And so this is how Ceasar, the new born chimp makes it out alive and comes to be raised in a human environment at the Rodman home.

Now it turns-out that Will Rodman had more than a professional interest in working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, his father, Charles Rodman (played by John Lithgow) has it. 

In the 4 years that follow, Ceasar the chimp grows up in the Rodman home, approaching maturity.  It is clear that genetic treatment that his mother had received had penetrated into his fetal brain while she carried him in her womb as well.  So he becomes one smart chimp, learning to sign and do all sorts of tasks that an average chimp would never be able to do.  In the meantime, Charles is just getting worse.  Seeing that Ceasar had no ill effects from having been exposed to the treatment, Will decides to steal a number of the remaining vials of the experimental drug from his lab to give the treatment to his father.  Initially, the treatment works miracles on his father as well.  HOWEVER, soon it becomes clear the Charles’ immune system is fighting the viral portion of the treatment.  Will realizes that if this treatment was going to work on humans, a different virus would have be used as a delivery vehicle to the brain.  What to do?

Will convinces his boss, Steven Jacobs (played by David Oyelowo) that the treatment had not been a failure for the reasons the company had thought.  It did not cause the chimp subjects to go berserk and, in fact, the treatment had worked (at least initially) on his father.  Finally, Rodman tells his boss that if anything, the treatment had made _both_ Ceasar and his father (temporarily) more intelligent than they ever should have been.  Intrigued at the possibility that this therapy could actually increase human intelligence, the boss gives Will the go-ahead to work on a new virus delivery vehicle.

The rest of the movie is driven by two things.  First, Ceasar is growing-up.  And no matter how intelligent he may be, he’s still physically a chimp.  This means that he’s becoming far stronger than any human being around him, something that San Francisco zoo veterinarian Caroline Aranha (played by Frieda Pinto) warns Will about.  Second, using a virus as a delivery mechanisms is a tricky thing.  The first virus proved too weak for the human immune system.  Would using a different virus as the delivery mechanism prove better?

With several fortuitous twists the story proceeds to fulfill its task of explaining how the Planet of the Apes came to be.  Yes, it stretches the imagination but not as much as one would think.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes moved the story from the original series’ completely improbable starting point to a movie resembling Jurassic Park in many ways.  But I’ll leave it to viewers to judge for themselves whether they were satisfied with how this movie played with the elements of science and fiction.

Finally as a note to parents, I do believe that the PG-13 rating is appropriate.  Yes, there is violence.  But like a lot of recent comic book based movies, notably Iron Man I/II, Green Hornet or Thor, there’s a lot of glass breaking and shots (at the end) fired, but not really a lot of blood.  So if you found those other movies basically okay, you’ll find this one okay as well.


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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan [2011]

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB ()  Roger Ebert (2 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541995/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110720/REVIEWS/110729995

REVIEW REVISED to incorporate new information on Oct 12, 2011:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan [2011] (directed by Wayne Wang and co-written by Angela Workman, Ronald Bass and Michael K. Ray based on the novel by the same name by Lisa See) is a story about two sets of “sworn sisters” in a type of relationship called laotong in Lisa See’s novel.  

The film begins at a restaurant in contemporary Shanghai with a group of business-people celebrating the finalization of plans by their firm to open a new office in New York.  The boss (played by Russell Wong) notes that just like the restaurant where they are sitting is adorned with butterflies, so too their company is about to transform into something new and announces that he’s sending his two best people, Sebastian (played by Archie Kao) and Nina (played by Bingbing Li) to New York to open the office.  As the dinner continues, the film shifts to a young woman Sophia (played by Gianna Jun) on a motor-scooter, who tries to call someone with her cell phone.  Unable to reach the person, she hangs-up, turns on her motor-scooter and heads-off.  Shortly afterward, we hear the sounds of an accident. Later that night, when Nina is already sleeping at home, with Sebastian sleeping at her side, she gets a phone call from a hospital.  Apparently that there’s been an accident and Nina was the past person that the last person that the woman (who had been driving a motor-scooter) had called prior to the accident.  Nina immediately gets up, dresses and rushes to the hospital where she finds Sophia badly injured and in a coma.

The film then switches to 1997.  We see teenaged Nina and Sophia dancing together to a pop tune in a relatively upscale Shanghi apartment belonging to Sophia’s step-mother Mrs Liao (played by Hu Quin Yun).  Mrs Liao comes home and is irritated at the music being danced to by the two teenage girls and puts on “something more appropriate.”  We find out that Nina had been hired by Mrs Liao and her husband rising businessman/stock broker, Mr Liao (played by Zhong Lu) to tutor Sophia, who had come from Korea (probably North Korea) after the death of her mother.  We soon find out that Nina comes from a more working-class Shanghai family composed of her and her parents, Mr and Mrs Liu (played by Shi Ping Cao and Ruija Zhang), who live in a much more modest flat.   Despite differing social circumstances and differing intelligences, the two – Nina and Sophia – become very close friends.

One day, a younger aunt of Sophia’s (played by Vivian Wu) comes over.  This aunt is something of a Chinese feminist/historian and artist.  She had come-over to the Liao’s home to get from Mrs Liao a number of items left over from a great-great-grandmother who lived in the 1800s and died in the early 1900s.   Among the items that she came for was a seemingly impossibly tiny embroidered shoe and a fan with mysterious writing on it.  The teenage girls look at both items (and particularly the shoe) with amazement.  The aunt explained that up until the twentieth century, Chinese girls’ feet were bound at a young age in such a way that even in adulthood, their feet remained unnaturally small.  This was done because it was popularly believed in traditional Chinese culture that the more perfectly small a woman’s feet were, the prized she was in marriage.  The aunt explained that the procedure was, yes, unimaginably painful and served to diminish a woman’s capacity to live independently of males. 

The young aunt then explained the writing on the fan.  The script on the fan, she told the girls was called Nu Shu (or literally women’s writing) and that this was a secret language used by women in sworn relationships called laotong to communicate with each other.  The aunt explained that marriage in traditional Chinese society was primarily done “for men’s reasons – economic and to produce sons.”  In contrast, a laotong relationship entered into by young girls at a time when their foot-binding procedures were nearing completion waw entered into for “women’s reasons” or a life-long emotional bond.  The two teenagers, Nina and Sophia then decide that _they_ want to enter into such a relationship... The aunt, finds “an expert” who writes out an informal contract (interestingly enough on the cover of the record that Mrs Liao did not like) and that was that.  They were now “sworn sisters for life...”

The rest of the story that follows is an interplay between Nina’s and Sophia’s laotong relationship taking place in our time, and the laotong relationship of Sophia’s great-great-grand mother named Snow Flower (by Gianna Jun who also plays Sophia) and her laotong Lili (Bingbing Li who also plays Nina).

In both cases Sophia/Snow Flower and Nina/Lili encounter all kinds of trials and reversals in life.  Lili like Nina grew-up initially at a lower station than Snow Flower/Sophia.  But Lili’s feet proved more perfect than Snow Flower’s and Nina was more ambitious and intelligent than Sophia.  So both Lily/Nina rose to greater prominence during their lives than Snow Flower/Sophia.  In contrast Snow Flower, whose feet were “less perfect” ended up marrying a “mere” butcher, even though she enjoyed more women friends than Lili.  Sophia’s economic fortunes also decreased.  She apparently never got into the university (there’s a scene in the movie in which Nina really tries to help her, even to the point of trying to take her entrance exams for her) and her step-parent’s economic fortunes collapsed with a crash in the Shanghai stock market.  Nevertheless, she also seemed to have a richer (if somewhat more scandalous) personal life, having at one point an Australian lounge singer boyfriend named Arthur (played by Hugh Jackman) who Nina did not approve of.

The movie ends with a rather beautiful monologue by Nina talking about the changes that occur during the course of one’s  life  – and honestly imagine the number of changes that China has gone through in the last 50 years from the chaos of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s-70s, to the gradual liberalization that started under Mao’s successor Deng Xiaopeng that took a radical turn in 1989 with the Tiananmen Massacre, to today’s headlong rush toward unprecedented market-based prosperity, even as the Chinese Communist Party retains strict political control – and the need to look in the midst of such change for something that is permanent (like a laotong friendship). 

It’s a remarkable ending to the movie, and _very_ Eastern/Buddhist. where the primary tenet of Buddhist philosophy is that of samsara or “all things change.”  Indeed, it’s worth watching the closing credits of this film, because as the credits roll, this change of which Nina talks out graphically before one’s eyes – first there are nothing but rice fields, then a town of huts is built, than those huts are replaced by more permanent pagoda like structures.  Those are replaced by European looking buildings and finally those are knocked down to be replaced by skyscrapers.  In the meantime, a statue by a river keeps getting torn down or blown-up and replaced by something or someone new.

All in all, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan makes for a very nice reflection on the value of bonded friendship.


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Another Earth [2011]

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 ½ stars) Fr Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert’s review

Another Earth (directed and cowritten by Mike Cahill along with Brit Marhling) is an independent-film which recently won 2 awards at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and IMHO deservedly so.

Driving home somewhat inebriated from a party, 17-year old Rhoda Williams (played by Brit Marhling) a talented student who had just been accepted into M.I.T (astrophysics, astronomy?), hears on the radio that a “new planet” _looking almost identical to the Earth_ had _just been discovered_ and _could be seen_ “just right of the north star” in the evening sky.  Looking-up at the sky for seemingly “just a second” to try to spot this new planet, she misses a stop-sign and crashes head-on into a stopped car at the intersection, putting the driver John Buroughs (played by William Mapother) into a coma and killing his wife and young son instantly.  Rhoda ends up serving 4 years in prison, presumably for DUI and manslaughter. 

After being released and not having really forgiven herself for what she had done, Rhoda takes a job as a janitor in her old high school.  (I just _loved_ the “cleaning lady” symbolism).  By chance, she comes across news that the driver of the car that she had hit had recovered from his coma some time back (apparently she did not learn of this while she was in prison) but that he had withdrawn from life, having given-up on his previous career as a composer and was simply living in an old broken down farmhouse somewhere in the nearby countryside.  She decides to go see him. 

When she arrives, he does not recognize her.  (He had been in a coma during her court proceeding at which she presumably plead guilty, and since she was a minor at the time of the accident her name apparently had not been publicly released).  Introducing herself as a cleaning lady, she offers to clean his home with a one-day-free trial.  He accepts.  Both impressed with her work and remaining utterly depressed (understanding that he was in no shape to take care of himself on his own), he hires her to come once a week to put his wreck of a house in order.

In the meantime, the story of the “Other Earth” does not go away.  Apparently this “Other Earth” was exactly identical to our Earth, only that for some reason had been previously hidden.  Visible now, it also proved not particularly far away (reachable by space flight).  During the course of this time, contact is attempted between this “other Earth” and ours.  When it is established, to _everyone's astonishment_, it is made between two scientists with exactly the same names, born on exactly the same days, one living on one Earth and the other on the other Earth (wow... ;-). 

An Australian sounding entrepreneur decides to build a space-craft that would fly from our Earth to the other one and offers an internet essay contest to _anyone_ who’d like to join him on this expedition.  Rhoda, who had previously wanted to be an astrophysicist, applies, writing a poignant essay recalling that the sailors who had done most of the sailing during the “European Age of Discovery” in the 1500s were "not the princes" but people, like her, at the margins of society, with stories to tell and pasts to expiate.  She of course wins.

In the meantime, as Rhoda cleans up John’s house, his life slowly improves and he starts to “have feelings" for Rhoda.  But of course "he does not know ..." What to do?

The rest of the film has its twists and turns, some rather predicable, some not.  The film has the feel of an old Twilight Zone episode.  And, of course there is a resolution. 

The basis of the story is a play on a theory, which is increasingly capturing the imagination of the public – that of a possibility of the existence of parallel universes, which differ only slightly from our own.  In one (statistical) conception of the theory, at _every point of decision_ that each of us comes to, the universe would split in two.  Presumably the final “outcome” of the Universe made up of all these parallel universes is the sum total of their individual outcomes.

So in this movie, a terrible accident happens just at the discovery of another identical world.  Guess what happened on the other world?

I really liked Another Earth and for _a lot of reasons_:  First, as I’ve written in this blog many times before, I am generally going to be a fan of low budget, independent creativity.  Second, I _really liked_ the theme of this movie of a search for redemption.  I _really liked_ Brit’s symbolic choice of profession (of “cleaning lady”) after returning home from prison.  It reminded me of Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of God as “maintenance man” in Bruce Almighty.  Finally, I do hope that a movie like this would encourage _all of us_ think a little, dream a little, reach out a little toward more ultimate questions than those that surround us in simply the day-to-day.  Day-to-day concerns certainly have their place, but they are _invitations_ to reach out to something more.  For we “do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Mt 4:4).


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Crazy, Stupid, Love

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr Dennis (3 ½ stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1570728/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv085.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110727/REVIEWS/110729985

Crazy, Stupid, Love (directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, written by Dan Fogelman) is a good if mis-rated if very painful/funny romantic comedy for married forty-somethings with families.  I say mis-rated because while I _do_ understand why many parents would want their teens (and perhaps even certain tweens) to see this movie, I do believe that an R-rating (requiring that minors see it with their parents) would probably be more appropriate.  The language alone would justify the R-rating to say nothing of many “separated/divorcing parents acting stupid” situations.

But then the “separated/divorcing parents” situations are _exactly_ what makes the movie quite surprising, indeed compelling.  Ultimately unswayed, the CNS/USCCB gives the movie unsurprisingly an “O” (morally offensive rating).  Still there is a gentleness to this movie despite its many embarrassing situations that I do believe deserve consideration by families especially those that may be experiencing some problems (and the CNS/USCCB does recognize positive elements to this movie as well, even as it ultimately goes back to it's "O" conclusion.  So parents, I'm saying please read the CNS/USCCB review as well).

So, what’s the movie about?  The movie begins with 40-something married couple Cal (played by Steve Carell) and Emily (played by Julianne Moore) finishing dinner on a night-out.  Cal asks Emily what she wants for dessert.  She answers that she’s trying to figure out what she wants.  He announces that he’d like a slice of apple pie, she announces that she’d like a divorce.

The drive home is awkward.  Emily talks mostly in tears as she is driving about how they’ve drifted apart, and that yes, she’s gone to bed with a man in her office David Linghagan (played by Kevin Bacon).  Cal remains mostly stunned and silent, until after being pressed by Emily to say _something_ he declares that he’d just like to drop-out of the car, opens the door and does so (fortunately, they were near home, going rather slow on a residential street ...).  Now stunned herself, she stops the car, goes out to him as he brushes himself off.  He tells her that he’ll move out that night, and get his things as soon as he finds some kind of an apartment.

They come home where 17-year old babysitter Jessica (played by Analeigh Tipton) is waiting for them.  She’s had a quite a night as well, as she accidently caught Cal and Emily's 13-year-old son Robbie (played by Jonah Bobo) touching himself (Emily and Cal also had a smaller 8-or-so year old daughter) whereupon Robbie confessed that he was touching himself while he thought of her.  The strangeness of her evening is trumped however by Cal and Emily’s announcement to her that they are getting a divorce.

Why would they tell her, of all people, first?  Well they were both in shock.  And besides someone had to drive Jessica home, and it would explain why Cal was doing so, since Cal is leaving the house anyway... In the car, it becomes clear that Jessica is not only stunned that Cal and Emily are getting a divorce but that she’s also kind of had a crush on Cal.  Cal doesn’t respond to this at all and probably for two reasons: One, he’s not an idiot (and is basically a good man, as is _everybody_ in this story as we progressively learn). But also two, he was in shock about what happened at dinner with his wife.  So he just drops her off and her parents house and heads off, to a bar.

At the bar, he first runs into local playboy Jacob (played by Ryan Gosling), who the audience had already seen in action in a previous scene in which he struck-out with one young lady, Hannah (played by Emma Stone) and rebounding, scored with someone else.  Jacob is everything that Cal is not. 

Trying to drown his sorrows in the succeeding days, Cal goes to the bar a few more times always to run into Jacob there as well.  Jacob is scoring and Cal is moaning.  Finally Jacob gets irritated with Cal’s rather loud and repetitive complaints about how his wife left him (and was sleeping with another guy).  So Jacob calls Cal over.  He first reminds him that thanks to his loud complaints everybody in that bar probably knows more about Cal’s life than they should.  Then, he offers to help him “recover his manhood.”  Why would he do that?  Jacob himself says that Cal reminds him of someone he knew.  In any case, Jacob pulls Cal out of his funk, gets him a haircut, advises him on buying some new clothes, and teaches him a few lines.  Soon Cal is starting to score with the women at that bar as well.

Very good.  Why would there be _anything_ redeeming about this movie at all?  It’s what follows.  There _are_ a fair number of twists and a good number of awkward situations.  But as the dust settles at the end, EVERYONE HAS BEEN CHASTENED FOR THEIR SINS (often initially in surprising ways, but when one thinks about it, not all that surprising) BUT JUST AS IMPORTANTLY EVERYONE IS STILL STANDING and ARGUABLY HAPPY and _in their proper state_. 

I’ve seen a whole bunch of Steve Carell movies over the years including 40 Year Old Virgin, Evan Almighty, Get Smart, Dinner for Schmucks, Dispicable Me, Date Night and now this one.  ALL OF THEM were fundamentally _gentle_, even when in pretty much _all of them_, Steve Carell _plays the fool_ for the others.  I _really like_ Steve Carell’s stuff.  I like the gentleness and I like fundamentally positive message of his movies: we may often be weak, we may make mistakes, but that we are fundamentally good and certainly redeemable. Good job Steve and good job rest of the cast and crew!  And yes, the other performances by Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon and even the babysitter Analiah Tipton and Marisa Tomei (as one of 13-year-old Robbie's school teachers) were _all_ good to excellent as well.

ADDENDUM:

Given some of the controversy surrounding one of the subplots in this film involving (off-screen) teenage sexting, I was wondering if someone like Chris Rock should redo this movie in a couple of years, perhaps even having a white wife (and hence mixed race children).  I say this because the people who end up suffering the most as a result of morality laws tend to be black men. As of a few years ago, there were black male minors in jail for having been caught with white girlfriends in sexually compromising situations for which it'd be next to _impossible_ to believe white male minors would find themselves serving time.

I personally think that sexting is unbelievably reckless (and yes, sinful). But given technology and teenage hormones, I find it to be almost inevitable (among teens). But it horrifies to me to hear of teenage lives destroyed by something (and again, often enough _black teenage lives_ destroyed by something) that wasn't intended to destroy anyone.

In any case, I liked this movie, definitely_not_ for its sexting. Rather, I liked it because, as in the case of many Steve Carell movies, at the end of this movie EVERYONE was left standing, and EVERYONE was basically happy. There were no "goats", no "villains." Carell finds/makes movies like this over and over again. And that I believe is a wonderful thing!


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