journal features

movie review - This Is Where I Leave You

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2015.11.17

A friend leant me this, which turned out to be only okay. It's about four purportedly adults who return to the suburban home of their youth when their father dies. None of them is particularly likeable and some have problems that seem too large to be sustainable. Like, you wouldn't address a marriage this far gone?

They get together for a big snit, really, making it harder for their mother to come out to them that she's been in a relationship with another woman for some time. Not that the mother makes it easy, with a somewhat larger-than-life personality that is a lot to deal with. I didn't really buy the four kids and their mother as a family, and didn't really find the movie terribly engaging.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl