Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I'm a cranky old fart

(Now updated with LINKS!)

Watched Revolutionary Road at a friend's house last night. Big Acting. Sigh. I just kept thinking, Aren't all these Issues kind of old hat nowadays? I mean, isn't that what the 60's were largely about - rebelling against all that Repression from the 50's (yeah, okay, among other things)?

It's weird watching young whippersnappers (Winslet and DiCaprio, both actors I really, really like) play out their interpretation of struggles that those of us that actually LIVED during the 50's, 60's and 70's thought were behind us.

Maybe I was just annoyed to see such good, talented actors throwing such passion and energy into a project that was, to me, kind of dumb. The only character I had much sympathy for was the DiCaprio character, Frank, and the wife, April, I thought was just a total selfish nitwit. And I got the impression that I was supposed to feel something else.

And the character of the crazy guy was just way too over-the-top as a ham-fisted Plot Device. Which got me thinking about other movies that have handled the issues in this movie better and these are the movies I thought of:

A Woman Under the Influence
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Five Easy Pieces
Kramer vs. Kramer
and no one can beat Peter O'Toole's performance in The Ruling Class for portraying the Crazy Guy Who Speaks Truth To Repressed Normal People.

Thoughts?

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