Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale is very successful at creating trapped, uncomfortable, angry feelings which made this movie not fun to watch. Which it is not to say it wasn’t a very good movie because it’s packed with spot-on performances* and succeeded at creating the above range of feelings. While Noah Baumbach films of late tend to be populated with people I don’t want to spend time with in real life, but enjoy tremendously seeing on screen, the Berkman family were a bunch of people I didn’t enjoy all around.
Verdict: Recommended
Consider also watching: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), The Royal Tenenbaums
Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home
*Including a 22-year-old Jesse Eisenberg playing a high school student. My goodness, what must he have looked like when he was an actual high school student?
Come to think of it, many of his early films DO feel like that.