DVD REVIEW:
"FLIPPED" ☆☆☆ 1/2
"Flipped" is the new Hollywood movie from director/co-writer Rob Reiner, who often gives us diverse blockbusters, both good and bad, hit and miss, mixed and praised, rotten and fresh, and here directs the movie he probably should have made all along, and it's a real treasure. I don't say that lightly, and I'll tell you why, just give me a time to lovingly praise, and I love doing that...
About love and life, the swinging 60's, and family cheers, "Flipped" follows two kids: Bryce Lowski and his family just moved into the neighborhood, and the only girl across the way is Juli Baker, who from shot one watches smitten as Byrce and the Lowski's pull up into the drive. From go she is easily taken by the young Bryce. He isn't, being a 7-or-so year old he thinks girls are weird and clingy. They aren't weird, but they certainly are clingy, and here Juli is so much to mention she died for his eyes, and desperately stricken ran to hold hands with him, in what cements the kids from the movie on. Juli and her girl crush, Bryce and his boyish jerk ways. What's the hook of the story, we follow Bryce and Juli up to Middle School, and through the same span of time, the same scenes and moments, we jump, or flip, from one point-of-view to another, one side of the story to the other. The dilemma for both Bryce and Juli, is Byrce is still a pain, Juli is still love-struck, and through misunderstanding in those different observations Juli takes new interest in other things, things more important and real, than love, and Bryce soon finds out what being in love means when he falls for Juli, just as she's moving on and losing her girlhood obsession with him. We are with them, from school to family life, where it mingles healthily or in calamitous results, still from one point of observation, still in different understanding and misunderstanding, until the final scene when Bryce and Juli come together, without prejudice. My hope, and yours, will be that it be happily ever after.
I wouldn't tell you. Go and watch the movie.
Obviously, I loved "Flipped." Kid and family dramas, as lovingly crafted as it is here, is a weak spot for me, even especially when it's well acted by the kids, and those kids are as cute as Juli and as youthfully handsome as Bryce. And I can't tell how much I enjoyed watching Byrce and Juli, and actors Madeline Carroll and Callen McAuliffe, and the rest of the astounding adult cast: Rebecca De Mornay as sincere Lowski mom Patsy, Aiden Quinn as sagious Baker dad Richard, Peneope Ann Miller as self-effacing Baker mom Trina, and two of the best of the adult cast, John Mahoney as refined old Lowski granddad Chet, and Anothony Edwards as inflated jerk Lowski dad Steven. It's probably I love those dramas so much because I wish my childhood could have been so bright and adventurous. I'm not saying my coming-up sucked (it was just fine, thank you, you can go and ask my parents), but I never did fall in love as a kid, never did have a grand understanding of the world at such an attractive age. Though I did act all adult, tried to grow up too fast like most kids do, and I'm glad to see Bryce or Juli won't be growing up anytime soon. They will be with us forever, I think, as eighth graders, as teens in love, kneeling frozen in time planting that Sycamore Tree together.
However, critics didn't love "Flipped," nor audiences, who mostly didn't see it, since Warner Bros. released it limited, then pulled it from it's wide release, and soon the movie was taken out of cinemas right after. This was a studio picture, was meant to screen on 2,000 plus screens, and I scratch my head. Who cares the audience might not have been there (which I think is bull), that you needed to market it for a different demographic (I forget who and why. And why would you?), and that you were terrifyed WB, the movie, costing only 14 million, wouldn't get it's money worth, or be a post-Stand By Me or Wonder Years hit? If you had released the movie for everyone to see, the crowd would have come. It might not have been a runaway success, Gosh, what is mostly?, but it would have made more than it did. "Flipped" is sentimental, and it rightfully is so, and that's an audience soft spot. If you had released it, your audience would have found it.
Man, I wish I had seen it in theaters, myself.
Why those moviegoers would have come, is why most people come to movies: to watch captivating storytelling. And why "Flipped" is captivating is it's terrific characters, lovingly settled in the enchanting harken back to the 1960's, a wistful time of guiltlessness, love and spunkiness that was soon taken away by the Vietnam War when all those kids grew up to hate war and then peace and mankind came in, which should be more perennial, but I like child innocence better. It's more charming, and Rob Reiner has no problem with that, either. Having himself grown up in that time, he relishes it. And it's easy, for him and us, to delight in it, too. Why not when you can flood the soundtrack with those great, endearing contemporary pop/rock tunes: "Pretty Little Angel Eyes," "You've Got A Hold On Me," "A Teenager In Love, "He's So Fine, "One Fine Day," and "Let It Be Me" and so many others, and which here has the rare literal placeholder about, really, two teenagers in love. The cinematography by Thomas Del Ruth, a not oft prestigous DP, but the visual hero for "Flipped," does glorious genteel work, both lush in Suburban emanational delight and moodily sanguinity. And Reiner, who, as we all know, is familiar with this territory (director of that time-honored "Stand By Me"), and he does the best he's done in a while. Reiner directs good relationship dramas, is an actor's director, but he's also a filmmaking chameleon. He can do any subjects, any characters, any mood, and really make it work. And here sets the right mood, the right pace, the right feel, for "Flipped." He's fallen victim to it in the last decade or so, with maybe not so great scripts or characters, or that he wasn't up to par those times, but he has his strongest film since with this one. It might be the type of movie, after the perennial success of "Stand By Me," he was meant to make after, and as much as "Flipped" has a lot riding with it, could have been the magnum opus he should have made those 20-odd years ago. "Flipped" was a book, written only nine years ago, and is set during that early time, but even though Reiner did set the movie in the Rock N' Roll 60's, he could have made this film earlier, set it in those 60's, put those contemporary tunes in there, as endearing as they were then and are even now, and hit the mark right when it was still fresh when he made that wonderful, though tough and unabashed coming-of-age movie "Stand By Me" (what would you expect from writer Stephen King, who also had a lot to say about his boyhood youth in Maine, and is just as nostalgic though not as peachy as Reiner's).
Ah, oh well. We have "Flipped" now. It's just like those 60's, innocent, free-spirited and full of life, and even though I haven't come of age then, am only so young as to have that life experience now, can tell you anyway I have grown up to have flipped. Not in love, but in life and living, as both Byrce and Juli inevitably do. As they fall in and out of love, they also grow up. We can all relate to that. I say the critics who have been poor to this movie have either not grown up (but not in the Willy Wonka way), or have not recognized that they have. They should give "Flipped" another chance, and you all should give it a first. You will like, maybe even love, this film. If not, then maybe you are more like Stephen King then Rob Reiner, or one of those critics. "Flipped" does have real drama, though it is a tad too glorious in it's depiction, as Reiner is so keen to represent for us, and it doesn't fall short on it at all. Though I admit, as much as I love it and the shortcomings aren't too short, the movie could have been better. Even said there's nothing really wrong with it, the movie is well adapted, by Reiner and co-writer Andrew Schienman, the characters are purposely rounded, the cast is stupendous, and Reiner directs with the right air of simplicity and complexity that could appeal to kids and the older (that's a stretch, but I'll say it anyhow). But even as the narration isn't too boggled, isn't too over-lordly and big on exposition, which it somewhat is, it wasn't irritating to listen to. Everyone uses narration, if sparingly or just for the opening and the closing, but in "Flipped" it's key. The narration is used with love and caution, but even still I wish scenes of quiet weren't in conjunction with that voiceover, times we should be in the moment we are taken out of it to be with the off screen voice of Bryce or Juli and watching with them as a voyeur, a reminiscer, rather than be there with the younger Byrce and Juli in those scenes, to feel the magic, the love, the humor, the drama, with them at that time. I say even as the narration is what makes the movie you see, or will see, it might have been better had we witnessed the points-of-view of Bryce and Juli in more of a seamless style rather than the stark way added by the narration, complete with a screen-flip effect to transition from one side to the other. The movie's simplicity has that charm that I find the reason I enjoy this movie so much, but we could have had an artistic, complex, really endearing real-life drama film similar to "Stand By Me." In this way I think that film is better, but I didn't love it more, and you might find you wouldn't, too.
"Flipped" isn't perfect, and I'm not championing it as a masterpiece, but it's so wonderful. Again, another word I don't use throwaway. It has an affect on you, and it did for me. I can only urge you to see it, and if you had seen it while in it's theatrical run, you might have found something special. Movie houses, with the big screen, the immersive sound, the overall absorbance, and the company of dozens upon dozens of movie-lovers alike, is an experience to treasure with a movie that hits you deeply.
Again, I had only wished...
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