May 03, 2016
I think that this film does have something to say about what parents divorcing does to their children, if they ever had any, once they grow up. Perhaps it doesn't go about it in the best way possible, as I found that the movie struggled to maintain a consistent tone. Parts of it felt like it wanted to be a goofy comedy and parts of it felt like it wanted to be something that was a little more insightful and smart. And it's that, to me, what really holds the movie back a lot. I'm not saying that this is a bad movie, because it's not, there were a lot of parts that I liked about it and I'm not afraid to say that. Of course why would I be afraid to say that, but whatever. The point is that, at its worst, the film just misses the mark on what identity it wanted to put forward. At its best, it's a sporadically entertaining film with a damn good cast. Adam Scott, Catherine O'Hara, Jane Lynch, Richard Jenkins, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Amy Poehler, etc. That's a top-notch cast right there and they sure as shit do their best with the material they've received. It's just that they can only do so much and when you have a script that doesn't know what it wants to be, I think that ends up holding the cast back more than it helps them. Because they're juggling all these different ideas and tones the film wants to get across and they don't really know how to unravel all the mess to make something out of it that makes some sort of sense. You know what, as much as the film has something to say as to what divorce does to the kids of that divorce as they grow up, I think the film has far more insight into the real effects of what divorce does during the post-credits stuff. The post-credits stuff is, basically, interviews with the crew of the film and asking them if they were a child of divorce or not and this is, probably, one of the better aspects of the film. And that might sound like an insult to the film I had just watched, but it's really not. But there's something to be said about just hearing the stories from people who actually went through with it as opposed to it being bogged down by certain elements of the script. And you get to see how, really, a incredibly high percentage of people who came from divorced homes, as it were, are far more cynical regarding marriage than, say, people who grew up in homes where the parents were happily married. And I can relate to them, at least the 'children of divorce'. My parents were never together. It was more of a fling, but, as much as my mother did for me and how grateful I am for everything, I think the fact that she was never with my father in an "official" fashion has sort of, also, shaped how I view relationships and marriage. That's inevitable, in my mind, and I think the credits capture the effect that has on the people who grow up with divorced parents and how they view relationships when they become adults more than even the film did. But, since this was a post-credits deal, I ca't really count it as part of the movie nor can I let it affect my score. With that said, this isn't a bad movie, as I mentioned, it's just one that doesn't really know what it wants to be. Everything in the movie is decent, at best, but none of it, outside of the cast, is good. So I can't really recommend it. You can do worse, for sure, but there's nothing special about this, sadly.
Verified