It's Hard To Care About Another Strung Out Druggie In Half Nelson.

The Good: Moments of acting, Moments of character
The Bad: Virtually no plot, Oppressive mood, Nothing special on DVD
The Basics: Long, ponderous and uncathartic, Half Nelson is yet another drama where the viewer is supposed to empathize with a pathetic druggie. I didn't.


Did you ever watch one of those movies that virtually everyone is praising and simply sit back and say "Who cares?!" I certainly felt the isolation of being the only one in my immediate circle of friends to react that way to Napoleon Dynamite (reviewed here!). And after weeks of hearing how great Ryan Gosling was in Half Nelson, the first film I would see the actor in, I finally picked the film up on DVD and gave it a spin. Yeah, I'm back at that same place, with that same question again.

Dan Dunne is a junior high school teacher who is teaching social studies in an economically depressed inner city school district. He is addicted to crack cocaine and while he spends his days trying to inspire students with lectures on the nature of change, he spends his nights in a rut doing coke. When one of his students, a basketball player named Drey, catches him using drugs, the two form an unlikely friendship made more complicated by the fact that one of Drey's former father figures knows of Dan's drug habit. This guts Dan's moral authority to try to steer Drey right and she becomes wary of Dan as his habit gets worse. While Dan sinks further into addiction, the school's principal pressures him to use the text book and fly right, threatening his job along with everything else.

Dan is a pretty miserable character and he is played by Ryan Gosling with a slow, almost dimwitted glaze that instantly makes the viewer wonder why the middle school hired him in the first place. Indeed, the viewer wonders how Dan made it through college to become a teacher. And for those of us who care about such things as characters and have a desire to understand such things, we come to wonder what got Dan into drugs at all. After all, something got him started, something escalated him into the downward spiral where Half Nelson begins. But we are not privileged to that information.

The problem is, lacking it makes it difficult to care. In reality, it's easy to care about a drug-addled person without knowing their life's story, but if we are watching one person's struggle with drugs as a form of supposed entertainment, the least it could do would be to make sense. There should be something that drives us to the character, that makes us either want to empathize with him or else at least understand him or her. Writer Anna Boden and writer-director Ryan Fleck seem to disagree and the result is a shocking lack of character for the principle who dominates the screen.

Conversely, Drey makes a great deal of sense. Neglected by her overworking mother, she latches onto strong male figures in an attempt to fill the void left by her absent father. We get that. Drey's character is consistent and while she wanders a bit too close to the things she supposedly disdains for comfort, the viewer is willing to forgive the conceit. Drey buries her life in school work - where Dan tries to inspire her - and her basketball. Beyond that, she's just a kid.

The problem with Half Nelson is that Drey's storyline makes sense and works, but it is Dan who dominates the film. As a result, he begins to senselessly womanize and throw his life away as the drug addiction takes more and more of his sense of reality away from him. But the truth is, we don't care. Dan is not a particularly brilliant educator who seems to have a lot to offer his students. Instead, he continues to teach the same lesson over and over again with his students presenting reports on the nature of change in the world. The students seem quite able to look the information up on their own to fit Dan's thesis of change as a constant.

But basically, Dan continues to descend and the viewer isn't given enough about him to genuinely care whether he lives or dies. There's no real catharsis to Half Nelson and while I could stomach that in a story with a well-defined character who was interesting, here it just seems like a pointless exercise in cinematic experimentation. Dan's got a seemingly decent life, craps it up with drugs, it goes downhill . . .see ya. That's Half Nelson.

It's pretty sad when the most exciting moment of the film for me was the appearance of Deborah Rush on screen. Long after I had stopped caring at all about Dan - or even Drey -, the protagonist goes home to visit his family for dinner and his mother is played by Deborah Rush. Rush played Jeri Blank's mother in Strangers With Candy (reviewed here!). After over an hour of foot-dragging and boredom even the appearance of a supporting actress on a show I didn't truly enjoy was enough for me to sit up, smile and say, "She was on something marginally better than this!"

That's pretty sad.

Perhaps as sad is the fact that Shareeka Epps, who played Drey easily steals every scene she is in away from Ryan Gosling. I say this is say because Epps is playing a promising young student and basketball player. Given her aptitude for the film's lines, one assumes she is a promising young person, so how much acting she is actually called upon to do here is in serious question. Director Ryan Fleck could easily have said, "Read the script, then act like a junior high school student" and that would have worked for the role.

Presuming Ryan Gosling is not now, nor has ever been, a coked up junior high school teacher, one would expect his performance to require some seriously great acting that would constantly draw our attention. Instead, he is understated and, well, boring as Dan. For sure, he's playing a man whose life is in the toilet and going down the drain, but Gosling adds nothing to the performance to make us care about the pathetic character he is playing. Instead, the viewer sits, waits it out and vows never to watch the film again. Of course, given how the character is coked out and mellow, perhaps the flaws are within the character and Gosling is giving an amazing performance. There are more interesting drug-addled people to watch in Boogie Nights (reviewed here!) or Magnolia (reviewed here!); and in those films, the actors - Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, and Melora Walters - give great performances that I can easily recognize as being different from anything else they have done. Not so with Gosling in Half Nelson.

On DVD, the movie contains a boring commentary with a bunch of people - like the director - speaking in pretentious terms about why they made the choices they did. There are also deleted scenes which were fortunately excised from this film and prevented it from being even longer. Sure, it's only 106 minutes, but it feels at least six times as long.

So, there's the hype for Half Nelson and Ryan Gosling, but if you don't find slow, dull, repetitive outings of a druggie circling the bowl entertaining, then you might want to avoid this flick. I wish I had.

For other works with Ryan Gosling, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Idea Of March
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Drive
The Notebook

4/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Living Up To My High Expectations, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story Entertains!

The Good: Funny, Entertaining, Captures reality well, Great performances
The Bad: Light on DVD bonus features, One plot moment
The Basics: Near-perfect, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story manages to capture a difficult aspect of reality while still entertaining.


I can think of few movies I have been excitedly waiting to see as much as It’s Kind Of A Funny Story. I saw one preview for the film, a few years back, and it has been in my queue of movies to see ever since. So, when my library managed to get in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story for me, I eagerly bundled up for a night and made a pretty pure viewing out of the experience. I cannot remember the last time I was excited for a movie where the film so lived up to my expectations.

It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is a story of a character at the end of his rope, suffering from depression. But, unlike recent mental illness movies like The Soloist (reviewed here!), which accurately portrayed reality in the most miserable and gruesome way possible, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story manages to capture the uncertainty and fragility of a youthful breakdown while still being thoroughly entertaining. In fact, the movie made me laugh, choke up and relate more than I ever squirmed. I think the only other mental illness movie I enjoyed this much was the classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (reviewed here!). It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is more accessible than that and has a great cast as well!

Having seriously contemplated suicide, Craig checks himself in at the nearest New York hospital. Much to his surprise, the admitting doctor does not simply give him a prescription, he sends him to the hospital’s residential psychiatric floor. Because the floor for teen patients is currently undergoing renovations, the sixteen year-old is put in with the adults. After an unnerving tour by Smitty and fellow patient Bobby, Craig is unnerved. Compelled to stay for a full week, he is supported by his too-busy father and overprotective mother who agree that the hospitalization is probably necessary.

During a group session, Bobby expresses a need for a dress shirt for an interview for a group home he wants to move into. When Craig volunteers one of his father’s dress shirts, it draws the attention of Noelle. Noelle is a young cutter who is shy and insecure and she begins a conversation with Craig. Together, they converse and do art together, while Craig slowly comes to realize that the anxieties he has over the world and his future are steering him in a direction different from the one he thought he was headed in. Unsettled by Bobby, his xenophobic roommate Muqtaga, and visitors from his high school, Craig moves toward an important epiphany.

Because I am liable to simply gush about the film, I wanted to write first about what I didn’t like. On DVD, there is no commentary track for the movie and I think it could have used at least two different commentary tracks. There was one plot moment late in the movie wherein Craig makes a bad decision that made me grumble. It wasn’t Chasing Amy (reviewed here!), sit up and yell at the screen, guts the appreciation of the character bad, but it was pretty unnerving. That said, the movie recovers from that moment and went on to leave me very satisfied.

Part of what I liked about It’s Kind Of A Funny Story was how it managed to defy expectations even in its most formulaic moments. I tend to get seriously bugged by movies where two people end up in a romantic (or supposedly romantic, often the romance is actually missing, I’ve noticed) situation simply because they are the two people of the right age in the same place. Proximity does not always breed relationships and more often than not when that conceit is used, it upsets me. In It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, Craig and Noelle have a flirtatious relationship and it seems like the movie is building toward the two of them having a relationship. This, however, actually works in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story because the shared experience of youthful mental illness and the trapped conditions actually make it more realistic, not less. Unlike a forced romantic subplot in a horror movie where two people who are simply proximate suddenly develop feelings, two young people sorting their issues out is actually a shared conflict that reasonably breeds closeness. It’s Kind Of A Funny Story captures that exceptionally well.

The characters in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story are very interesting. Craig seems both very typical and subtly extraordinary. He has clear goals and desires, all of which have been sublimated to the expectations put upon him. It’s Kind Of A Funny Story does a good job of making his character journey realistic, well-paced and as uncertain as it ought to be. Similarly, without saying exactly what Bobby suffers from, his character is well-defined in such a way that it is as clear as the cut-marks on Noelle’s face and forearms.

What makes It’s Kind Of A Funny Story a decent exploration of the human condition that both captures reality well and does not insult the intelligence of the viewer is the fact that the movie does not pander. So, for example, the film begins with Craig contemplating jumping to his death and realizing that he needs help. Very late in the film, Craig ends up on a high place and the movie is not so simplistic, stupid or pandering as to stop to acknowledge the moment. Instead, the viewer picks up on the idea that Craig is in a different place and that jumping no longer occurs to him. I like that.

Like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is dominated by great performances. This was the first work I had seen Keir Gilchrist in and he blew me away as Craig. Subtle and realistic, Gilchrist is able to embody a young person having a serious crisis without making it melodramatic. What makes Gilchrist’s Craig work so well is that he is not suffering a severe disorder, merely breaking under the weight of what most people take as the “normal” experience. Gilchrist deserves a lot of credit for not hamming it up and making the character feel overblown or extraordinary in any way. That portrayal of realism works delightfully well for him.

Emma Roberts lights up the screen as Noelle in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, continuing her ascent into the collective unconscious as one of the rising stars of her generation. She is smart, has a great ability to present herself as physically withdrawn and she brings those qualities to Noelle, making her seem both broken and desirable. Even Zach Galifianakis is great as Bobby. He does not ham up his part, nor does he shy away from being unsettling when the role calls for it. Supported by Viola Davis, Lauren Graham, Jim Gaffigan, Aasif Mandvi, Bernard White and Jeremy Davies It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is fleshed with a great cast, all of whom make the most out of their (even small) roles.

On DVD, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story comes with minimal bonus features. The film has featurettes on the making of the movie, as well as a look at the premiere of the movie. With deleted scenes and tons of previews, the disc could have more that truly explored the film and it is disappointing that that is lacking from the movie. That said, the primary programming on this disc is extraordinary enough to keep one happily engaged.

It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is a rare film that manages to make the ordinary extraordinary and remind viewers that the world is what we make of it, not what others insist it must be.

For other works with Aasif Mandvi, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Last Airbender
The Proposal
Spider-Man 2

9.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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