Captain Fantastic (2016, Matt Ross)
Misleading title. I'm sure it has been said before: thought it was a superhero movie... No! It's about how hippie ways are better than ours. Only that... They're not!
I mean, I'm all in for homeschooling, teaching the little rascals the bill of rights and shit. To stick it to the man! Yeah! if the occasion arises of course... but then again, the occasion does indeed presents itself and they do nothing!
A cop stops them because one of their taillights is out... And instead of calmly exercising their Miranda, they pretend to be an Insane Jesus cult or something (the big kid starts screaming like Paul Dano trying to catch up with Daniel Day-Lewis)
They let a pig come inside their rig! Why are you doing that? Rule number one: Pigs are filthy, they should remain outside. Unless you are actually committing a crime a cop cannot come inside your vehicle without a warrant or an invitation, is like a vampire thing. I may not be a fucking hippie but I know that.
Then again, I suspect he's not a real cop, any other cop would call for back-up immediately, in fact he reached for his gun
Reasonable! The whole scene looks like if a wacko kidnapped some random 13 year old girls and wanted to start a dynasty by fucking his own children...
So, yeah, What's the "training" here? What's the lesson to be learned? How to look suspicious? How to get arrested? Is that any clever? Cause the movie is trying to depict them as some sort of European "Wunderkinds" thanks to the wonders of outside the system education. They know String Theory for God's sake! String Theory! Is like the writers picked the most difficult sounding shit they could find and go for it! That's so ridiculous!
You can't learn Quantum Entanglement by yourself in the middle of the fucking woods where you're having squirrel for breakfast and try to avoid Poison Ivy as toilet paper! That's a fact! It's difficult, Ok? The thing confounded Einstein, Ok? Is not easy. Is not easy!
This movie is so pretentious! Is talking to the audience: Look, sure your kid neither can explain what the bill of rights is, but these kids, oh no, these kids are well versed in Quantum Mechanics cause they were raised outside civilization. And they'll get into Harvard and Yale and Brown... But, no! That's not the way things work.
Unless you get a degree in a place other than my-papa-taught-me-in-the-woods, your kid won't get into Harvard, most probably cause he would be as much of an ignorant redneck as you are
I got to mention it. Sorry I gotta do it. Ok: Glenn Gould. Glenn fucking Gould. Music is a matter of taste of course, and you are entitled to like anything. But if you are a classical music enthusiast, you know that Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations are... I won't say shit, but at least not good, not good: mainly because that Asperger syndrome's case couldn't stop humming the tunes while he was playing, so you hear him in the background like a bothersome fly.
Yeah that bugs me. In the movie I mean... they're trying to present the kids as great connoisseurs of arts: but they are not!
And they speak Esperanto! A language nobody cares to learn anymore, and you know why? Well if you think Noam Chomsky is the greatest shit ever, you surely must know why. Chomsky spent his whole life trying to prove that language is biologically determined in the human mind and hence genetically transmitted, not this language or that language but in general: you born with the ability to acquire a human natural language (or more than one) if you speak with a baby Chinese and Finnish they would learn to speak Chinese and Finnish, ... Now what's the problem with Esperanto?
That it is an artificial language, man-made-with-logic, you learn it through inductive reasoning. A baby cannot acquire it! Only the adult mind can learn it (that is: after puberty) It's a fake language!!!
If you are so clever, Why would you want your kids to learn that shit? Because you are a hippie and you believe in universal fraternity and all that, I get that! But then don't celebrate the birthday of the man that fucking destroyed the whole validity of learning Esperanto. Noam Chomsky's day: Fuck You movie!
I have one positive thing to say about this movie and that is, Frank Langella in his villainous role (sort of): he's great. But even that is so wrong because you completely agree with him! You took a schizo--bipolar disorder woman without medicine to the middle of the woods?, And then when things got nasty you separate her from her kids? And yeah, of course, Western medicine should fix this now, right?! Right! You killed her Viggo Mortensen.
He's teaching the kids to steal? Actively putting them in danger Gives them alcohol? Children don't drink wine! Giving them Knifes, real weapons as presents? I'm sure in France or maybe Sudan or some other shitty place they do that too!
I don't care if you wanna see your wife's rotten body one more time before burning it to ashes and throwing it down the toilet (that was Ted Bundy's main argument too, ya'know?: "Your honor don't judge me, I just had the urge to do it")
Her will doesn't mean shit, man: grave-digging is a felony! So, yeah, I'm totally with the grandpa in all of this.
Now your daughter cause of your reckless parenting is injured, and of course, Do we resort to some Athelas herb, Voodoo crap or some Indian tea to fix her broken spine?
No! You go to a hospital! But the real question is: Do you have any money to pay for the bill? Ohhh... Very easy to be a hippie as long as you have grandpa's medical insurance, right?
But I'm sure all he learned from this horrible, horrible experience is:
And when he finally realized that he almost killed or forever crippled his 13 years old daughter, he then shaves his beard in some gas station's bathroom and everything is fine again, because now he is a responsible father: Hey, he must be, he shaved his beard!
And Frank Langella that threatened him with issuing a warrant for his arrest and to file for custody of the children; after the shave scene... Well he... just disappeared from the movie, because of movie happy ending, right?
I'm gonna honor this movie and make a final remark that's gonna be so clever, so clever! That could potentially match any witty line in this shitty script. Captain Fantastic? Rather Captain Terrible (You get that? Get it? like Captain Terrible... like, I did something there)
(by pelida77)
