Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic leaves viewers with the cheering, deeply affecting image of a dad whose superpowers lie in simply doing the best that he can.

The film doesn't take sides, but it does fairly, subtly and movingly represent them. Captain Fantastic takes a piece out of you.

A road movie with heart, humour and a lead prepared to give his youthful co-stars their share of the limelight.

Gorgeously photographed, and as loosey-goosey as its hero, Captain Fantastic takes some unexpected turns. Is Ben eccentric or irresponsible? Is he raising free-thinking iconoclasts — or training a new generation of Unabombers?

The dialogue is dense and quick and brainy.

By the end, Ross’ initially disarming fusion of cleverness and whimsy has curdled into a dispiritingly familiar mix of sentimentality and self-satisfaction.

The film is premised on a radical act that it buries beneath a grueling avalanche of quirk.

Simply excellent, a must see! A really well written story with really engaging characters. Acting and direction is great throughout!

That movie doesn’t work. It was based on a good idea, but it is written so poorly it ruins the whole movie. They are so bad at exploiting ideas. One of the main ideas is the critic of modern society. We get it but do they have to push this narrative so hard? With kids talking like literary students, with the cardio of athletes who like to do extreme mountain climbing as a family activity. And of course they have to throw every Marxist clichés in the book, it doesn’t fit the narrative. If only Viggo’s character was Nietzschian, it would have made sense. A Nietzschian father trying to raise his child to become superhuman. Then they could have played with the idea of when is it okay to follow an ideology and when is dangerous. Instead they throw some Marxist clichés who don’t really make sense in this context. Every time they could have done something interesting, they close the door. Like in the restaurant scene, when the young children’s ask about pancake and cola. It would have been a great opportunity to have a scene where the father is confronted by his children who realized that this is good food and that their father might not be right. Instead they finish that scene abruptly and go with the hunting scene that make absolutely no sense.

Oh, so that's how you get nominated, not once but twice by showing your **** for cinema. But in all seriousness, Viggo Mortensen was brilliant in this or just in anything he's in. Can't remember a time when he gave a bad performance.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

If this were 1968 this might be a good movie. You might even find yourself saying "right on" at some of the lines. But people stop saying "right on" when...c. 1973-4? And this movie is as dated as that for the same reasons. The counterculture isn't just over, it almost seems quaint in today's harsher realities when good jobs are outsourced, employers who want to give their employees just enough to keep showing up, petroleum companies who spend their money on expensive print ads rather than actually doing the things they profess to do in the ads, ad nauseum. Sure.. all of the sentiments this family believe in are probably more solid than most of today's **** so what? Who cares? And certain things about the film are almost laughably contrived...they travel in an old school bus(like the Merry Pranksters c. 1966) ...at a point of giving up his ideals, Mortenson CUTS HIS BEARD OFF, no I'm not kidding. The actually say "stick it to the **** who IS the man? We knew that c.1967-1974 but who is the man now? The cops? The politicians? The main reason I saw this was the pretty good reviews and V. Mortensson's appearance. What a waste.. I wish Vigo would lcontinue to make films like History of Violence, Eastern Promises, the January Man, Jauja instead of slop like this. Maybe it looked better on paper I dunno. Skip this one, even on a free library dvd.