This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
School Daze
Plot Overview
Gray-haired mama Ellie Silverstein
(Lois Smith) putters in her garden. “I love it out here,”
she says. “All I'm responsible for is this little piece of dirt.
No more saving the world.” Her shyster son Sammy (Paul Rudd)
is in recovery for his cocaine addiction. Family friends Peter Harrington
(Gabriel Byrne) and his new girlfriend Farah are also in recovery
for their own addictions. Peter is divorced from Ellie's 39-year-old
daughter Louise (Laura Linney) but they're all on friendly terms.
Louise an old fashioned girl talks to her best friend from high school
Missy Goldberg (Marcia Gay Harden) for catharsis.
Peter is a Professor of
Astrophysics at Columbia U. Back
in the day he had co-eds lined up to the moon for him to expand their
horizons. Louise was on his list. Other girls had more sexual experience,
but her mom taught her to cook. He went with her the old fashioned
one, and they were married for ten years.
Louise is an admissions serf in
a tiny office where she culls applicants for the MFA program and mails rejection
letters. She examines their slides with a loupe on a light table,
she being too small potatoes for a projector. Her lowly Art History
degree doesn't rate her more responsibility.
One application is from an F. Scott
Feinstadt—named after a famous personage Francis Scott
Key—who reminds her of her old high school flame Scott
Feinstadt now deceased. He is inept at college applications and
had forgotten to include his slides. She breaks protocol to invite
him for an interview and to bring his slides with him.
She is stunned to find him the same phenotype as her erstwhile
beau as if returned from the dead. Fancying himself a ladies
man ("not to be trusted") he easily seduces the vulnerable lady. He's
at the prime sexual age for a male and she for a female, so their
sex is fantastic and they latch onto each other. Missy gets wind of
it and arrives to take up their old competition for the (dead?) guy.
He doesn't know about any of that and just wants to get accepted into
the program, which ultimately will have to be on his own merits,
because—unbeknownst to him—Louise has no say in it.
Ideology
We share the couple's distress trying to work it out, and the writers have done us a favor by giving us unpredictable background actions to practice on. A wise man did the same in, (Prov. 30:18-19) “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”
“The way of an eagle in the
air”—swooping suddenly on its prey—corresponds to
Louise's retrieval of the critical application. First, we see her
pushing a cart load of apps w/slides
down the hall, hovering over them like an eagle. Then she examines
the slides through a loupe as a keen-eyed eagle examines the terrain
below. We see her looking out her window at the quadrangle like
an eagle in its aerie. She swoops down to pick up a dropped application
letter, the one with his name on it. The interview will move to the
couch where her cleavage is on display and T. Scott makes his move.
“The way of a serpent upon a
rock” corresponds to Louise tying T. Scott's tie for him during
a game of pretend. She slips it around his neck and through its silken
loops. It's a familiar enough routine for most men but here observed
from a third party angle.
“The way of a ship in the midst of the
sea” corresponds to Louise glomming makeup onto the tableau of her
face. Pat, pat, pat like waves breaking against a ship. Then she makes a
rictus with her mouth to raise her cheeks to receive some rouge touches.
This is like a sneaker wave carrying the ship to a new position.
Those were the easy ones. “The way of a man with a maid” is harder to second guess, maybe impossible. We'll leave it with American psychologist & philosopher William James (1842–1910) who wrote:
The real lesson of the genius-books is that we should welcome sensibilities, impulses, and obsessions, if we have them, so long as by their means our experience is deepened and we contribute the better to the race's stores; that we should broaden our notion of health instead of narrowing it; that we should regard no single element of weakness as fatal—in short, that we should not be afraid of life.
Production Values
“” 2004 was directed by Dylan Kidd. It was written by Helen Schulman and Dylan Kidd adapted from the novel by Helen Schulman. It stars Laura Linney, Topher Grace and Marcia Gay Harden. The actors all did a decent job. Linney showed an impressive range. The peripatetic pupils on campus were actual; production was too poor to pay for professionals.
MPA
rated it R for language and sexuality.
There are two versions available, their runtimes being: 1h 37m
(97 min) and 1h 40m (100 min) Ontario, Canada. The director had to
necessarily prune the book leaving out stuff including some of the
clever in-and-out weaving of the characters. Then he got too cute
with some of the scenes and had to cut them, consigning them to Deleted Scenes. Some critical
points moved with them, so he had to reintroduce them elsewhere.
That leaves us with what … a better job than I could have done.
The references to one's appearance changing as he ages were nicely
scattered throughout.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
Characters were trying to improve their condition, and the programs would necessarily have included belief in a higher power. Peter was on step nine, making amends. He offered to reunite with his ex-wife.
Louise and Missy, aside from their familiar domains of art and motherhood respectively, were not the brightest bulbs in the bin, and the academic environment here seems not to have helped them any. It's doubtful their mystical speculations in the extended hotel scene—it was cut—would convince any viewer to believe in reincarnation. It's like a scene from “I Love Lucy,” only more over-the-top. Guys might like that one but overall it was a chick flick.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
bibles.n7nz.org