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I love this movie so much

Pretty Good

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I get it. The hook of this film for most people is that it's supposedly "realistic" - the film is focused on a bunch of university graduates not knowing what to do with their lives. Bah, there isn't an ounce of realism in this film - at least not coming from the very made-up characters. Sure, we all feel like we don't know what we're doing at one point or another in our lives, we all have moments where we aren't sure if we're happy or living the best way that we can - it's not a great feeling. However, this movie hardly does that feeling justice because the characters are so unbelievably thick, annoying, uninspired, pretentious, and un- relatable. I couldn't care less what the characters were going through as spoiled, rich (YES, RICH), white kids terrified of working or entering the real world. I am sick of stories where characters like these have their lack of suffering played off as something deeply troublesome and worth anyone's attention at all. They are well off! They are intelligent, but choose to waste their education! Ultimately, they are just cry-babies. I couldn't relate to any of them, found them all so incredibly irksome and pretentious, and there was absolutely no point to any of their narratives. They are just terrible characters. This film could have been better if it had drastically different characters. They are not realistic, completely unlikable, and shallow. There's no character development, there's no reason to root for any of them, and in the end, I just couldn't believe I put up with them for the whole runtime. I do not recommend the film.

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995) dir. Noah BaumbachThis is not to be confused with the one starring Will Ferrell that came out ten-years later.Honestly even though I like this film, it isn't as good as I find myself making it out to be. There are some set-backs. The guys Max and Otis are probably the most engaging out of the group of characters. It is likely to do with the fact that I am partial to Chris Eigeman, who plays Max. Often in his early films such as this one, he plays a bit of a snob, but he has such a charming on screen persona that it's hard to dismiss him. Eric Stoltz is also interesting as another supporting character. When I think about it throughout this film, I realize that there isn't much of a plot. It is a talk-heavy indie film, therefore the appeal of it is in the dialogue, and then of course there are the talents of the cast involved that give it a vital spark. I thought the relationship between the main guy Grover and his girlfriend was presented in a unique way --it's mostly told in flashbacks, although after a while that becomes boring, especially in the last scene. It's anti- climactic. Not that I have a problem with that in general, but in this case it doesn't work. It is the only scene in the film that makes it a challenge to stay awake. The scenes where the characters were hanging out at Max's house or at the bar, and also the scenes featuring Parker Posey were more interesting.

I liked The Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale but Kicking and Screaming is so inferior to that. It's obvious that this film is his first effort.It is so cliché and slow moving that it is unbearable to watch. It is like the poor man's version of St. Elmo's Fire. I imagine Noah watched St. Elmo's Fire and tried to copy it scene by scene to create an updated version for the 1990's. For the most part, the acting is good and convincing.Although I only paid a few bucks to rent it on Comcast I felt totally ripped off. The only good thing I can say is that it encouraged me (and probably many others) that they too can easily sell their tired,uninspired scripts as well!!

Kicking and Screaming has suffered many setbacks on it's way to being considered somewhat of a cult film. The fact that another film exists with it's same title starring the well-liked Will Ferrel does it's own damage, but still many complain about the content of the film itself.Starting first with the characters that the film depicts. Many complain about them being boring and uninspired. Why couldn't Noah Baumbach pick a group of interesting people and have things happen to them? Mainly because this film is a realistic depiction of types of people you meet and may befriend despite their faults. Baumbach paints each person carefully onto the page from obvious personal experience in college life. Typically, events take place that could happen to any of us; a break up, a divorce, someone moves away, someone stays when they shouldn't, we all make bad decisions which effect our lives in ways we don't realize until it's too late.A good example of the type of slight an artist such as Baumbach faces in his own work is a flashback scene which takes place in Jane and Grover's writing class. Jane makes a comment regarding Grover's piece regarding the hollow nature of his subjects and how they never discuss anything important and tend to discuss the little things with more anxiety than anything else. This rings true to many things I have personally heard regarding "Kicking and Screaming", that everyone could be interesting if they put all of the jokes and snide comments aside and talked about how they really felt. The problem with this is how often do those situations of pure honesty and intimacy arise in the common person's life? It is rare to be able to pull your deepest feelings out for all of your friends to see in every conversation you have, and it usually comes out in a fight or when a situation is deteriorating - such examples are Skippy and Miami/Max and Skippy, which are some of the most honest moments in the film combated with the development of the persons themselves throughout the film.Baumbach tends to overkill the stress on aspiring (as well as accomplished) writers in his best-drawn films, which are this and "The Squid & The Whale. Where as the two parents on the edge of divorce in the latter film are writers, in Kicking and Screaming, the two young people in the outs of their love are aspiring writers and the main's parents are going through divorce. You can see many pieces of Baumbach's latter work in Kicking and Screaming, as he went back to the basics with The Squid & The Whale after suffering many disappointments in the 1990's.It is clear that Baumbach is a different type of film maker than his auteur counterparts such as Wes Anderson. His films feel and look realistic, rather than coming from another world inspired by the many worlds within our own. He has an interesting voice, and a knack for dialog. Kicking and Screaming is a piece of romantic comedy history, and more people should go out of their way to watch it with perspective and an open mind, rather than looking at the faults in the subjects which we all have ourselves.