Movie Worse Than Expected

Scott Tobias on Men, Women & Children

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Despite a few last-ditch pleas of moderation, Reitman offers a comprehensive portrait of The Way We Live Now, and the overall effect is a mass freakout, like a roomful of grandparents booting up their first AOL CD-ROM. And while there’s no doubt that the Internet age has profoundly transformed the culture, adding new dangers and stresses and altering the nature of how we communicate, blind panic is not a sophisticated adult response. Hiring Emma Thompson to bring her British gravitas to the voiceover narration isn’t sophisticated, either. Nor is opening the movie in outer freaking space. Politicians can get away with such a nauseating combination of self-importance and social alarm, but artists cannot.

Now consider an unlikely twist: What if this movie is a runaway sensation? What if it somehow NAILS THE MOMENT, for audiences? Relatedly, American Beauty is now fifteen years old.