Review: The Son

-


Peter (Hugh Jackman) is a busy man with a new baby with wife Beth. (Vanessa Kirby) His ex wife, Kate (Laura Dern) shows up one day to inform Peter that their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is really struggling with depression. Now he insists on living with Peter, who now has to find a way to take care of his son and intrigrate him into his new life. 

Remember when everyone was predicting Hugh Jackman would get an Oscar nomination for this performance before it came out? How could they not? It's Florian Zeller's follow up to the esteemed The Father. After watching this, it's hard to believe they come from the same director.

Everything about this film aside from Vanessa Kirby bothered me. Beth is innocent, and did not deserve to be questioned as much as she did. She is the only one that isn't completely stupid or cringe-worthy. Peter says he wants to help Nicholas, but lacks the fundamental understanding of depression and teenagers in general to be of any use. Kate behaves in a way I hope I never will if I'm ever faced with a divorce. She oversteps, she reminisces about her marriage with Peter when it feels so inappropriate to do so. It's no wonder that Nicholas is also still very hung up on his parent's split. Then there's Nicholas. Zen McGrath was not up to the level of acting required for this very troubled young man. He was awful and it made it impossible for me to even sympathize with him because I just found him painful to watch.

I think this film wants to have a discussion about mental illness, but it never really gets there. Nicholas acts out, the parents handle it in the worst way possible. The ending you can see coming from a mile away. At one point in the film, Zeller completely wastes the audiences' time with a dream sequence. I cannot stress enough how ill-placed this sequence is. If you've seen the film, you know. If not, it's a huge spoiler, but you probably already know what's going to happen anyways.

I'm actually surprised at how much I disliked this. I knew it got bad reviews, but I'm a sucker for dark family dramas and I figured I would find something to enjoy here. Nope.

Grade: D

Comments

  1. thevoid99March 8, 2023 at 3:10 PM

    OK, I just took it off my watchlist. I'm getting bad flashbacks of Life As a House with whiny Hayden Christensen... ugh... I hope you get a palette cleanser for this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamMarch 9, 2023 at 4:50 PM

      At least with Hayden's character in that movie you got why he was the way he was. This one is just...mad about his parent's divorce? It's awful.

      Delete
  2. BirgitMarch 9, 2023 at 11:17 AM

    Oh my,this sounds like a good film gone down the toilet

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, let's talk movies!
(comments are moderated to reduce spam)

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Batman

-
Image
Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) has quietly been trying to make a difference as The Batman in Gotham. He can't be everywhere. He works closely with Lt Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and they face a puzzling crime by a masked murderer going by The Riddler. (Paul Dano) As the stakes get higher, they realize just how deep corruption runs in Gotham.  The Batman is first and foremost a detective story. Director Matt Reeves obviously took inspiration from films like Se7en and Zodiac when he crafted this story. S e7en is one of my all time favorite films, so that worked well for me. I loved seeing Batman and Gordon work as a team. Same with Batman and Selina. (Zoe Kravitz) They ooze chemistry. As much as I love the Nolan trilogy, Christian Bale only really had good chemistry with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Here, Pattinson and Kravitz click together instantly.  I'll admit I was worried about Pattinson as Batman. His Bruce is VERY mopey, which fits with the story. My main issue with the movie,
Read more

Thursday Movie Picks: Wedding Movies

-
Image
How fitting that Wandering Through The Shelves has us start the month of June with movies about weddings. June brides are a thing, right? At least that's what people kept telling me when I got married in June. I just picked it because it was warm. To be honest, I don't like many wedding movies, so this was kind of tough, but here's a few I can tolerate. 1) Wedding Crashers This is one of my favorite comedies until the last 20 minutes or so when it falls flat on its face. But it's so hilarious and quotable before all of that, I can forgive it. Lock it up. 2) Rachel Getting Married I used this one for a pick last year but it's easily my favorite movie involving a wedding. The acting is fantastic. I 3) Corpse Bride Truth be told, I wasn't crazy about Corpse Bride, but like I said. Slim pickings in the wedding movie world for me. I'd watch this over a "classic" like My Best Friend's Wedding or Runaway Bride any day.  click th
Read more

Random Ramblings: The Radio Flyer Conundrum

-
Image
Recently, I was talking to someone about who I thought were the best child actors when I was also a child.  Two that really stood out to me were Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazello, and one film those two were in together was called Radio Flyer.  Then I was reminded about the uniqueness of this film. Instead of reviewing the film, I wanted to have an open discussion about the ending. It deals with a tough issue; child abuse. What I’ve noticed is the way that the film ends is interpreted many different ways, and the filmmakers never came forward to say what was right and wrong. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions on it. How did you interpret the ending? Obviously spoiler alerts will follow.. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Two young boys, Mikey (Wood) and Bobby (Mazello) move in with their single mother and her boyfriend, who refers to himself as ‘The King’. It doesn’t take long for The King to start physically abusing Bobby, and the
Read more