Sunday, August 29, 2010

Clearly Claire: Flipped for "Flipped"



We all remember that time. The confusing, strange, messy time when we were just starting to figure out life. We were stepping one foot out of childhood and stepping another into adulthood. We remember the awkward moments, the unstoppable changes, and that first love. The one that stays with us no matter how hard we try to shake it. Rob Reiner's new movie "Flipped" chronicles two young adults flying through that time in their life. As they try to navigate the troubled waters of their youth, they find that they just might be what the other has always been looking for.


The movie starts off with Bryce (Callan McAuliffe) moving to a new town. That's when he meets her. The girl who was destined to spend the next few years stalking him, his next-door-neighbor Juli (Madeline Carroll). To her, he is her one love, the boy walking around with her first kiss. To him, she is an annoyance, one that he must avoid for as long as he can. But what happens when he begins to see her for who she is and decides that maybe she isn't an annoyance, but his one true love. Will it be too late?


This movie is, to say the least, lovely. I loved every moment of this movie. It was beautifully shot and wonderfully written. The actors are phenomenal and I enjoyed every minute of their performance.


The dialogue is genius. The narration keeps switching from Juli and Bryce, who show us the same scene, yet offer a much different perspective. I love how, in one scene, Bryce talks about how he tried to run away from this crazy woman and she grabbed his hand to make him stay.Yet, Juli, narrating the same scene, says that she had to chase after him and when he grabbed her hand, smiled shyly loving every minute. It is just so clever.


The actors in this movie, not only speak the dialogue well, but they add something more. McAuliffe is so good at playing a teen stuck between what he thinks he should want and what he actually wants. He really made me believe that he was a confused kid with a perfection driven father on one side and a crazy yet lovable friend on the other. In one scene he is sitting at the dinner table with his family eating with Juli's family when it dons on him that his father may not be the perfect man he pretends to be. He performance moved me to no ends.


The plot is done wonderfully. The filmmaker took moments in every one's lives, moments we all experience and turned them extraordinary. The scene with Juli and her family sitting and eating dinner together is one that I can see in my own mind from childhood, yet I never truly realized how wonderful those moments were until I saw how Bryce's family interacted at the dinner table. It was unpleasant to say the least. This movie shows you life as we all have seen it, yet I wasn't bored. It wasn't a movie about life so much as it was about the people in our lives that we can take for granted. The people that we see everyday, but don't really see.


This movie made me laugh. It made me cry. It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling that lasted a long time after the movie ended. Unfortunately this movie is no longer playing in Stockton, but it is worth the drive. See this movie, I guarantee you will love it. It will remind you, like it did me, of the crazy eventful time that was filled with first, but none as special as that first love.

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