Although they are manufactured and designed to be seen by wide audiences motion pictures lead to very personal reactions.  Sometimes they are wonderfully positive, but sometimes they are overwhelmingly negative, and that can have little to do with the filmmaker.  It is one thing to call out bad filmmaking, cheesy effects, unconvincing acting, etc., but occasionally someone (like me) just doesn’t react well to all the effort that goes into making a feature film.  This is one of those times.

Mike Mills’ drama about a rumpled radio journalist Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) becoming a temporary caretaker for his young nephew Jesse (Woody Norman) is filmed in black-and-white on locations across America.  Psychological issues involving the boy’s parents (Gaby Hoffman, Scoot McNairy) lead to this situation, and Johnny makes the best of it, learning to deal with a child for the first time and coming to terms with his own personal problems.  The story also has a larger context, as Johnny and his colleagues interview children in Detroit, New York and New Orleans about modern life and their views concerning the future of America.

I hated this movie pretty much from the get-go.  Filming this story in black-and-white seemed pretentious to me.  I felt that questioning kids about the future was a fool’s errand forcing them to come up with quasi-philosophical answers just to comply.  Referencing noted social reference works, by title and author in subtitles, seemed pretentious to me.  The mental issues involving the boy’s father never seemed real or convincing.  The dialogue is full of double-talk and psychobabble about feelings and personal space and such.  I was bored and this movie seemed to go nowhere ever so slowly.

Now that’s not really the case.  This is a movie about narrowing a generational gap, about making personal connections with the people closest to you (Johnny with Jesse; Johnny with his sister).  I see that thematically the story has merit and value, and to be fair there were some nice moments among all the stumbling.  By the end it was nice that Jesse had learned to trust and love his aimless uncle.  And yet I really didn’t care.  This is just one of those stories that I feel was undeserving of feature film treatment.  If you find the story worthwhile, then that’s great.  I did not, and that is my loss.  It just goes to show that not all movies are for everybody.  ☆.  7 July 2022.