| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
A- |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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A Very Fun Language
by Adam S (movies profile)
Nov 9, 2007
147
of
158 people found this review helpful
Saw This About a week ago..
And... (Spoiler Free)
It's a very sweet, well done movie. It's written and directed by James L. Brooks which means three things.
1. It's very long.
2. It makes you feel good.
3. It's tremendously well written.
Adam Sandler stars as the world's greatest dad, who was named the "best chef in the country" by the LA Times. He runs a highly successful restraunt, and has a good enough staff that he can spend time with his family in their gorgeous home. He is married to Tea Leoni, and his mother in law is the hysterical Cloris Leachman. They have a daughter as well, though the focus is on the married couple and their nanny, who I'll mention shortly.
The film is narrated by the daughter of the nanny as if she is writing this story as an admissions essay to a prestigious university (Princeton I believe?) the school name is irrelevant though. What we see is a story that began probably 7-10 years earlier, as she briefly goes through the details of her family immigrating from Mexico to America for a better life. The mother worked two jobs to make ends meet in LA, and they were happy. She could speak fluent Spanish and get away with it, and she rarely ventured out of the neighborhood.
Until her daughter got interested in boys. Then she realized that she couldn't work nights, and applied for a day job as the nanny of the Kaskeys (Sandler and Leoni).
The rest of what we see is a blending of great lines from Sandler, who gives arguably his best performance here. He plays what can best be described as a serious version of the lovable doof he plays in his comedies. Not quite the character in Punch-Drunk Love, but the same sort of quiet seriousness that he does very well. Leoni is respectable as his incredibly low self-esteemed wife, who seems to be obsessed with keeping in shape after the birth of her child, and one of the better scenes in the film comes when she buys clothing a size too small for her daughter as a way of encouraging her to keep the weight off. You can tell she means well, but it doesn't succeed, and Sandler is outstanding here, conveying a father who wants to be on the same page with his wife, but can't agree with many of the things she does with their daughter.
On the other side is Flor the nanny. She is a strict guardian of her daughter Christina, who is brilliant and bilingual. Flor is very strict, but very loving at the same time, and she is exactly what Sandler is looking for in a woman.
We'll leave it with that.
Mrs. Kaskey lets her insecurity get in the way far too often, and she eventually begins to adopt Christina as her own daughter of sorts. She pulls strings to get Christina a scholarship to a very prestigious private school, and the girl loves it.
Eventually, for reasons we can't discuss, she has to leave that school, and she's furious with Flor, who gives my favorite line of the movie in response.
"Is it everything you want to become nothing like me?"
This is a film about parenting, about marriage, about communication, and about love of all forms, and it's all done very well with many comedic moments to boot.
Not gonna be taking any best picture Oscars home or anything like that, but definitely worth your money.
A- |
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