Captain Fantastic starring Viggo Mortensen

Anybody else see this? We watched it last night, it seemed okay, had some good parts, but now I think I'm really starting to dislike it in retrospect. It's full of holes where it doesn't need to be and the main character is just a dick. I wonder if I'm going to end up feeling about this the way I did about Away We Go (another road movie about parenting) except with AWG it was pretty instantaneous, because really the self-congratulation doesn't get much thicker than a Dave Eggers script directed by Sam Mendes. Never mind all that, if anybody else has seen this I'd like to hear your comparisons and was this movie really bad or just lame?
Was it worth it just for full frontal Viggo (who is nearly 60 btw wtf is that guy made of)?
Why would such a brilliant person have such relatively pedestrian taste in music (which the film reminds us of, over and over)?
The first time Frank Langella speaks in the film he's unseen, just yelling at Viggo through a phone, and I thought whoa what just happened here why is he on the phone with Dick Nixon?
The kids' names are actually kind of great.

ive only seen the trailer but the character is patently a total dick tbf

didn't see this it looked awful

I didn't realise VM had signed up for the latest Marvel franchise was my first thought.

I feel like I might watch this again to find out how exactly it failed, and to get our $6 worth, but I mostly think this really boils down to a decent cast with workable direction let down by a really atrocious script, the 3rd act in particular.

Question: since LOTR, has Viggo been typecast as a flawed shepherd? The Road (which I haven't seen), this movie, what else fits?

did we need a folksy hipster version of "Sweet Child O' Mine"?

We really didn't.

i did like Bodeven's character

The version of Scotland The Brave was a pretty good signal this wasn't headed anywhere good, in hindsight

Noam Chomsky Day came up and I was like "yes, this makes sense given the rest of the movie"

We need more earnest indie dramas named for Elton John albums

Like...

Tumbleweed Connection starring Armie Hammer
Made In England starring Emma Watson
21 At 33 starring Reese Witherspoon
Leather Jackets starring Ryan Gosling

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road featuring Dakota Fanning

Too Low For Zero starring Paul Dano
Reg Strikes Back starring Domnhall Gleeson
Songs From The West Coast starring Cate Blanchett

Noam Chomsky Day came up and I was like "yes, this makes sense given the rest of the movie"

― Neanderthal, Sunday, October 30, 2016 10:40 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

remember reading that the director actually does this IRL

Caribou directed by David Lynch starring J.Law and Aziz Ansari

A wealthy Silicon Valley scion blah blah begins worrying that he is losing his grip on his new company blah blah technology that could save the lives of people suffering from a rare genetic disorder blah blah son of Sarah, a midwestern blah blah seeking to regain whoopty-doo oh my god one of them is a murderer plagued by a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am the sun goes down on all of us at some point.

I don't suppose I disliked this movie, even as parts of it made me roll my eyes, mostly because I was only at the films cos I was feeling emo that day and wanted to get out of the house.

nothing made me eyeroll more when he made his kids leave the diner because "there's not actually any FOOD here".

Or that out of six kids taught to "stick it to the man" their whole life, only one actually questions their father who runs their lives by his watch and a set of unwritten laws like "interesting is a non-word"

Question: since LOTR, has Viggo been typecast as a flawed shepherd? The Road (which I haven't seen), this movie, what else fits?

His two Cronenberg films don't, really. Or that horserace one. He hasn't done too many english-language films since LOTR tbh

Notion: This film is best watched as a metaphor for Aragorn's life after the fall of Sauron. Frank Langella is Elrond. Aragorn couldn't deal with life in a castle, and he and Arwen went off into the woods to raise the best Rangers ever. The Age Of Men happens, she can't deal, and OPEN ON TREETOPS - THE FOREST.

Just replace all of the soundtrack with literally anything else.

I mean even the names would fit. Just swap out Bodevan with Eldarion and the rest writes itself

kinda surprised so many Obama Democrats hate this, since it was made by one who was determined to make Mr Cash a deluded extremist.

(Viggo voted Stein so i dunno what he was thinkin)

Anyway, the third act is mostly terrible but i didn't mind it, esp George MacKay mmm mmm

"interesting is a non-word"

This is the truest pearl in the movie! An ex-ILXor academic sez kids who write it usually mean "not interesting."

interesting is both an elision of many other things we'd rather not say, and always a recursive comment on its own lack of clear meaning.
trying to use "interesting" without irony is still a fun game for children, they're right about that

Trust ILE to hate on this very good natured and enjoyable movie.

Well yes that is what we do

I liked it!

Respnding to way upthread - I don't think 'he's a dick' is a valid criticism really, of course he's a bit of a dick. But he's a well meaning and, imo, mostly likeable dick.

Why would such a brilliant person have such relatively pedestrian taste in music

Have you met people? Probably the most intellegent guy I know seems to only like blandly tuneful rock and folk songs afaict.

aw thx man

I never even heard of it till the SAG awards, and didn't know Big Love's Alby aka Gavin from Silicon Valley wrote and directed movies.

Pleasant. Mortensen's given this sort of watchable performance many times.

Trust ILE to hate on this very good natured and enjoyable movie.

I daresay it was the tweefolk cover of sweet child of mine that tipped the balance.

Like tombot I thought the guy was a dick, of colossal proportions. He'd basically become the kind of authoritarian he despised, with totally unrealistic expectations and a complete inability to compromise. His kids were suffering from varying degrees of stockholm syndrome, and anyone who tried to challenge him was psychologically humiliated.

Despite all this, like chap I enjoyed it. I think the little scene in the middle about lolita was telling, though viggo wasn't quite a humbertian monster and it was easier to sympathise with his goals if not his methods.

I still think my idea about frank langella as elrond is the best way to think about this movie

fuck this movie. it's made for dickheads that go to adult summer camp.

hated this