The Squid and the Whale v. Match Point

So, let's take two movies. Two movies that both involve couples and possible divorces. Two movies that involve men who I would not ever want to be near in a relationship. Two movies set in big cosmopolitan cities. Two movies that involve people who teach tennis lessons, for crying out loud. And what do you get? One movie that is surprisingly good, and one movie that is surprisingly unwatchable.
Should we start with the good news or the bad news? Since I can't hear you answer, let's start with the bad news. Match Point is not all that great. That's right, I just said a movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johansson (together!) is not that good. Why isn't it good? Because, to start with, it's creepy. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, though pretty to look at, is surprisingly good at convincing you that he has no soul. His character would do anything for money. Well, apparently anything other than keep his pants zipped, but that's to be expected. Ms. Johansson's character, on the other hand, is just kind of boring and inconsequential. Can you imagine leaving money and security and the best river view I've ever seen (a whole wall of glass so close to the shore that you can barely see any land on this side of it) to be with a pretty girl who is kind of whiney and demanding? And poor? Exactly. The whole suspense part was kind of thrown off by me being incapable of suspending my disbelief long enough to think that Ms. Johansson was going to make out well in this movie. Not to give anything away. Not that the trailer doesn't already. I will say, though, that the very last "twist" did sort of make me smile, but that might have just been because the movie was almost over.
Now we come to the good news. The Squid and the Whale is not only good, it's funny. That's right, a movie about divorce, juvenile alcoholism and pretentious writers is funny. Hmm...maybe I should have seen that coming. In any case, this movie was almost amazing. It might have actually been amazing, but it was really late on a school night when I saw it and so I had the impression that the first half was brilliant and then the second half was just really good. There are basically about six characters. Mom, Dad, older brother, younger brother, Anna Paquin, and the tennis pro. Anna Paquin gets to be a character because she is basically revising her part in Almost Famous and Finding Forrester, as well as becoming Katie Holmes in Wonder Boys. Which is to say that she's a college student who wants to sleep with her professor.
Jeff Daniels has gotten a lot of good press for this movie, and he deserves it. Dad is a professor and a novelist who apparently writes big huge deep books but can't get another book deal because he fired his agent. He speaks in really large words and indoctrinates his older son (high school age) into thinking that sleeping around is infinitely better than settling down (and who am I to argue?), and also bombards him with his opinion of every book ever written (oh, that's only "minor Dickens") to the extent that older son thinks that everything he reads in high school (or doesn't bother to read) is crap. Older son, on the other hand, does an amazing job at being that stuck-up wannabe intellectual who doesn't actually know what he's talking about but thinks that he does. The kind of kid who refers to the Metamorphosis as being Kafkaesque. The kind of kid who plays a Pink Floyd song to the whole school and tells them he wrote it. The kind of kid I totally knew in college. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out who he reminded me of. Younger son, on the other hand, drinks beer and masturbates a lot. He wants to be a tennis player and is damn cute. He's maybe thirteen and I like him a lot.
In contrast to Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney has not gotten nearly enough attention for this movie. I thought she did an amazing job at being the mom who is just in the really bad position of having married a pompous asshole and not realizing it until it is too late. She was really good in Kinsey, but this performance was even better. It was one of the few times I've seen someone playing a mother where you could actually tell what she was like before she had kids. In any case, it was amazing.
The plot of this movie is interesting, I guess, but it was the characters that really stuck with me. They were each (other than Anna Paquin and the tennis player, who only had minor roles and therefore can't really be held to the same standards) really well done. Exceptionally well done, even. They seemed like real people. And because they seemed like real people, they brought me into the movie. That, combined with the Lou Reed song over the final scene, really did it for me.
Score: The Squid and the Whale (lots), Match Point (0)