A young woman drives out to her boyfriend's parents' farm to meet
them, but she's having second thoughts about their relationship. DRAMA
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I'm Thinking of
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I am so tired of this kind of film. Films that are expressionistic and overly long, but never amount to anything substantial or memorable. They exist only to allow the filmmaker, in this case Charlie Kaufman, to stroke his own ego and convince pretentious film aficionados that the film is brilliant. In reality, it's a nonsensical, pompous attempt to diagram the human condition, but with absolutely zero substance. This film is a joke, plain and simple, and apart from the performances, I don't see how anyone can call this a good film.
An unnamed young woman (Buckley) is on a road trip through a snowstorm with her boyfriend Jake (Plemons) to meet his parents for the first time. Along the way, through narration, we learn the woman is considering ending the relationship. Their conversations make up the bulk of the movie and they don't make a lick of sense, and only exist to make the audience see Jake as a learned prick. Once we meet the parents, things go off the rails extremely fast. We jump through various points in time and see Jake's parents as older, younger, and everything in-between. Who the hell knows why? From there, we get back in the car, watch the couple get ice cream in a snowstorm, and end up at Jake's old high school where we follow a janitor around for a while and end with a musical number at a Nobel Prize awards ceremony. I know Charlie Kaufman is known for his cerebral films, but this is ridiculous. For any film to work, you need some semblance of a narrative, even if it's not the focus. Otherwise, you get this. Kaufman is a director I may not revisit. His screenplays are great in other hands, but when he's behind the camera, the film is a complete mess. It's just not worth the time and effort to sit through another plot-less fever dream. |