slickstu

If ever there were a case for the state sanctioned sterilisation of potentially inept parents it's Noah Baumbach's Margot At The Wedding and his previous The Squid And The Whale. If people like this actually exist then they should be tracked down and neutered immediately! This begs the question, then: why would anyone be interested in watching a film about people who are so abhorrent? It was a question raised by The Squid And The Whale; a question which remains unanswered.

Like it's predecessor, Margot At The Wedding features a group of self-centred adults attending to their petty squabbles while their neglected children journey inexorably toward a maladjusted existence as a direct result. This time around we have fine performances from Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh but they're burdened with characters who have nowhere to go. There's no character progression, they finish the film as they start, they learn nothing from their own actions. As a result, we the audience also learn nothing and the entire experience is rendered pointless. Jack Black gives his serious role a red hot go but ultimately he struggles. John Turturro appears briefly and his likable character is a welcome addition but it provides only a brief respite from the rampant narcissism.

Baumbach appears unusually obsessed with the grimier details of peoples lives depicting his characters masturbating, examining their own scrotum and crapping their pants, but the point of this excessive detail remains unapparent. Indeed the whole production is grimy, unattractive and "film student"-like with it's hand held camera and poor lighting. Indeed the lighting is so bad that one can only assume that Baumbach had no lighting designer at all!

Possessing precisely the same deficiencies as The Squid And The Whale, this film proves yet again that a hi-fi cast is no substitute for lo-fi production values.

2 out of 10.