Hola all. Massawyrm here.
I love Rob Reiner. When he’s on, he is really, really on. THIS IS SPINAL TAP, STAND BY ME, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, MISERY, A FEW GOOD MEN, and my personal favorite THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT (which I can honestly say I’ve seen nearing a hundred or so times and can quote verbatim) Sadly, he’s had a rough decade or so. Nothing clicked. THE BUCKET LIST had its moments – but it really felt too much like a one-last-ride kind of movie, in which a number of our aging talents got together before it was too late. Sweet, but a little too kitschy – especially for Reiner who always excelled at making sentimental movies that knew how to wink just right to get you to accept how contrived they might actually be. His wry sense of humor and slightly skewed perspective always allowed him to tell good stories in a great way.
Well, he’s got that magic back.
FLIPPED is so on target with the passion Reiner has shown in his previous works that it almost seems fetishistic. It is a love story of two very different people, set in the 50’s/60’s, drenched in sentimentality, and served up with a dramatically different perspective on a pretty classic story. It couldn’t be more Reiner if it tried, but in the best possible way.
There are a number of things that separate this film from the usual girl-next-door love story, chiefly that it does something you’re not supposed to do – the entire film is told with narration. Every last bit. What makes it work is that there are two narrators. Half of the film is narrated by our male protagonist, while the other half is narrated by the girl-next-door. Reiner smartly directs each version of the story differently, but not in the way that he changes major details or alters dialog. This isn’t a tale playing around with the flaws of memory; it is a story about the flaws of perception. There are scenes in which the boy, Bryce, is clearly uncomfortable around Juli (the girl next door). He doesn’t want to talk to her; in fact he’s avoiding her. But in Juli’s version of the story, Bryce’s uncomfortable smile is big and bright, his eyes happy to see her. When he says ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” it sounds more like a promise than a brush off – a complete 180 from the previous version of the scene. Most of the time its subtle – but other times it is not.
What sold me on this was the way Reiner flips the dynamic. It’s not the classic story of a nerdy boy winning over the beautiful neighbor. Quite the opposite. The boy is the hunky dreamboat and the girl next door is an awkward mess of pigtails that everyone in school thinks is different. They don’t dress her down or hide her behind glasses, and there isn’t even the hint of a make-over scene. FLIPPED is the story of a guy brushing off the girl of his dreams, because he can’t see past her social ineptitude, until of course it is too late and he has shunned her one time too many. It is the antithesis of virtually every romantic comedy you’ve ever seen. And it is told with the benefit of seeing it through our protagonists eyes.
Bryce is a jerk, and like any true love story, it is his interactions with Juli that press him to become a better man. But that transition takes the better part of the movie, during which the layers on his family are slowly pulled back to reveal just why Bryce is so put off by this weird girl and her poor, strange family. For something light and fluffy, the film has a surprising amount of depth which Reiner makes sure to remain unsaid. Our protagonists are too young to fully understand what is going on around them or to self-diagnose their family’s dysfunction; but Reiner leaves enough scraps lying around for you to piece together what it is that makes both of these children tick. So rich were the characters, that my wife and I spent the better part of an hour after the film discussing and dissecting them to put complete pictures of the kids together – which is far from what the movie tries to do. You don’t feel like anything is really incomplete, but it invites you to talk about it nonetheless.
Incredibly wholesome and undeniably sweet, this movie is an ice cream cone on a Sunday afternoon. It is an adorable, delightful story, besmirched by just a hint of heavy internal strife, but always tempered with a glowing, sugar-coated innocence that brings the movie back from being too heavy. Thoroughly satisfying, FLIPPED is a wonderful film that fits perfectly in Reiner’s resume and is absolutely worth your time. RECOMMENDED.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
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