Z/Web

I knew little of this but it was getting good reviews and it turned out to be more dramatic than I expected. It’s the story of a high school kid who’s in a bad car accident and suffers brain damage that makes him dysfunctional. He has trouble “sequencing,” that is, getting the order of things right. So he might put on his shoes first and then try to put on his socks, etc. This makes it hard to hold a job. He works as a night janitor at a bank and hopes to be a teller someday, but struggles with the money counting. He’s befriended by a guy at a bar who claims he used to know the kid when he was a high school hockey star, but soon we realize that he’s just using the kid to help him rob the bank. The climax is pretty good: we aren’t sure how the kid’s going to worm his way out of all the trouble he’s gotten himself into, but the resolution works. There’s a lot of neat stuff in the film: the kid’s roommate, a blind guy played by Jeff Daniels, is a brilliant character, full of insight; the pacing of the film is excellent, with a good balance of drama, humor, and thought-provoking; it’s well-directed, too, though there are occasions where it tries too hard and almost resorts to melodrama. I also liked the way the kid changes and grows throughout the film. Overall, an excellent, thinking film. It ultimately is a little lighter weight than it should be, perhaps because of the action-oriented ending, but the majority of the film is character-based, with interesting people and terrific performances.

This really surprised me. I expected silliness along the lines of Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby but not as good, but I actually liked this one better! It’s funnier, more absurd, and less crass. The pace is snappier, the humor both more biting and more subtle, as well as being on target (most of the humor is ice skating related, whereas in Talladega very little was racing related). I loved the cameos by famous ice skaters and the hilarious skating commentary during the competitions. Of course this isn’t earth-changing filmography here, but it is rather fun and totally entertaining.