The Squid and the Whale

Squid keeps you on your toes, but payoffs will have you smiling - maybe in rueful recognition of the truth - in scene after scene.

Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.

It packs a hefty emotional wallop.

Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin.

This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.

An entertaining and perceptive film with one big problem.

The absence of any nuance in the father's character bespeaks the filmmaker's unwillingness to trust his audience. Making the movie may have been therapeutic for him, but I can't say the same about watching it.

Ain't nothing like a Baumbach script in today's cinema. Romantic and Realist poetry at the same time. Important to see kids as the protagonists of a divorce story, the voices that often go unheard. Film does a lot with a little.

mom and me versus you and dad.. The Squid And The Whale It is so fabricated that it has to be realistic and when one achieves that fine line on the horizon and manages to perfectly balance it until the curtain drops there is a cathartic release among viewers which is quite rare to find. Noah Baumbach's writing is way too strong and has enormous potential to be independent of any barring or restrains and floats peculiarly where one cannot move away ones concentration from it. His execution skills are admirable too but might have to work on it a bit more to even match with its astoundingly poetic script. Jeff Daniels has got it covered on "performance" department where Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg are supporting him throughout the course of it. The Squid And The Whale is not your typical dysfunctional family genre feature for the places it visits and the range it contains, is something one can't even possibly imagine.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review. this is a review.

The mother is totally fake, Jeff Daniels looks like he is not sure if this is supposed to be a comedy or something more serious. What a bore of a movie..I fell asleep after five minutes, so at least I got a good nap out of it. When it is clear from the get go that both parents are headcases, you can be sure that you are in for 90 minutes of agony. It evades me how this flick gets the rave reviews it did. I am going to pick up my video camera this afternoon and shoot random stuff, ask random people random questions, and you can be sure it's going to be a lot more interesting than this...