Reviews

While this wasn't a bad movie, it just wasn't all that good either.

Visually compelling, I must give it that... and a glimpse of people with manners and emotional restraint in this day and age of South Park mentalities is refreshing.

But I was expecting much more, and the story in and of itself did not progress beyond the 'merely interesting'.

The young blond, when all was said and done, was unconvincing as a true and deep love interest for the older Cooper... this being confirmed by the manner in which she (seemingly) so easily jumped from his arms to the more believable Brosnan's.

There were a few scenes that were thrown in merely for building suspense that felt like cheap gimmicks after the fact, like when Cooper was stopped by the police. Or the blithe way his wife's affair with that other fellow just conveniently dissipated (especially after such professions of mutual love).

There were some profound things going on that just never seemed to come to a realistic fruition, and thus by the end, where everyone seems to live happily ever after, one can only walk away from the theatre and shrug.

Spoiler warning: I can see why many people would not think much of this movie. There were many instances where tying seemingly unrelated or insignificant details together got a bit sloppy, unlike all of his previous movies (and I always felt this was MNS's major skill).

For example, I was convinced the half-muscle guy was going to play the role of the guardian, but there should have been some greater tie-in on why half of his body needed to be super strong (I envisioned him holding the beast by the scruff of the neck with his strong arm while his 'normally-developed' half did something else necessary for the scene to be believable... instead, all he did was stare and then nearly messed up even that simple task).

Also, the young son of the puzzle guy suddenly being the Translator by being able to read symbolic meanings from a wall of cereal boxes was too conveniently deus ex machina, although I can see what MNS was trying to do there, and many fond memories of childhood for us all did indeed entail the morning breakfast study of the cereal boxes in front of us as we ate from our bowls.

But compare that with how clever the 'by listening to the critic we were steered wrong' theme turned out to be... which was a nice twist because everything up to that point seemed reasonable and logical, as far as the critic's advice went... it's a well-known pitfall to judge everything by its cover, or to miss important aspects of life by viewing everything strictly from our own stereotyped experiences, no matter how true they might be MOST of the time... I seem to recall a maxim along the lines of "If you judge things and make your decisions only by what you've seen happen before, you'll be right most of the time, but when you're wrong, you'll be tragically wrong" or something to that effect.

Or how about the 'twist' of Giamatti being, not the Guardian, but the Healer (I call it a twist because by that time I had forgotten that he used to be doctor), the man who himself was in such need of healing, and because of his deep, deep grief being able to spiritually transfer that depth of feeling into saving the Angel, who in fact really wound up saving him, in the end ('thank you for giving me back my life' is how I believe he ended the movie). That's heavy stuff, and extremely moving, especially to those of us who are older and have children of our own.

I don't mind MNS's overt bash at critics or the egocentric casting as writer-whose-ideas-will-change-the-world stuff... I don't judge the movie based upon the director's personal life or motives... in fact, I thought the writer was very human and without the hubris that many here are accusing him of having as a director for playing that role himself... furthermore, I think Giamatti was playing a sort of John The Baptist role (unlike a previous poster who likened the writer to John The Baptist), because the writer himself will become a martyr.

All in all, if this movie is a failure, then it's a noble one. The fact that MNS tried something different, and it wasn't quite the same calibre as his previous work, is no reason to dismiss TLIW lightly.

In fact, I think the movie's reputation will grow as time goes on.