Beginners

If I had a car I would have left after the first ten minutes. Now, I don't want to spoil anything for you by at first telling you it was awfully slow, not well explained, and downright boring, but, oh, I guess that is what I'm doing right now. It starts off with a viewing of the house, the house that was lived in by Oliver's (Ewan McGregor) father (Christopher Plummer), where he reveals that he is gay, and has always been. Even throughout his 44 years of marriage, with his wife yes, he was living a lie. It's not as bad as it seems, he loved her, just more as a best friend if you will. I think the movie was trying to paint a picture of how growing up in a dysfunctional childhood, with your dad never being around, not showing much love to your MOM, and your mom, your only mom being a little crazy herself, how that can impact that child's life immensely. At the same time trying to show how the gay rights movement started, and how being gay, being a pariah, was very difficult at that time, and still today. The main problem is that they didn't do a great job in connecting the two. Oliver meets someone, who he falls in love with, someone who he can tell anything to, not only because she would listen, but also because she had family problems herself. To say the story had good intentions I think is the right way to put it, but to fully understand what is going on, they needed to do a much better job at explaining. In most cases showing is more appreciated then telling because it doesn't just lay everything out for you. In this movie they should have done the opposite. If you come out of a movie having an amount of questions, that you can't count on your fingers, then there is a problem. A movie that leaves you with an ending where you are supposed to ponder on what might happen, or what the characters are thinking, is exactly what you want. But if the movie ends and there is a distinct storyline and closing, you expect to be satisfied with how it concludes.

Side note: If you love dogs, the greatest part of the movie is just that, a dog named Arthur. Hands down one of the cutest dogs out there.

MY RATING: $