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So, the director of The Family, Luc Besson, he's a filmmaker and a producer with a pretty
pronounced style. Are you a fan of that style though?
I know that he's got a lot of fans and ah The Professional and ah The Fifth Element
and I'm not one of them ah there are, there are fun moments in each but my problems with
his films has always been that he marries these broad stereotypes and over the top caricatures
of people with like horrible violence and um I think the moralist in me and the film
watcher in me has a real problem seeing those together.
Yeah, I've got to agree with you on that I've been ah pretty contentious in my relationship
with Luc Besson you know the Fifth Element is a cult classic that I've had people constantly
say they wanna watch with me but I just can't do it and it's weird that you bring up they
way that the, the violence in the films clashes with the kind of cartoonish nature of it because
that was actually a big problem for me in this movie. There were moments of violence
that, in something like Good Fellas, which is a mob movie with violence and you know
outsized characters and you know a little bit of humor...
Sure. But it would have impact and this it's just
nothing. There's just nothing there. I feel like this movie is like ah for a person
with the mind of a child but the like sensibilities of an adult and they just don't like match
like you've got adult violence and like really stupid childish antics like I kept waiting
for someone to sit on a whoopee cushion or, or get a pie in the face.
Yeah, no I can understand that and unfortunately, The Family, you know the film it does vacillate
pretty heavily between the drama and the comedy. Do you think either one of those was more
effective or do they cancel each other out pretty much wholely.
Well, if I were to go from the ah reaction of the audience that I attended it with I
would say the comedy definitely worked but it didn't work for me and ah and, and I guess
the drama did't really work for me. There's some fun like character moments with some
of these characters. I like ah Michelle Pfeiffer ah I like her performance in the film I think
she's kind of chewing on the scenery quite a bit...
Oh man, I have to disagree with you so much right now.
It's fun to see. Yeah? No, worst Michelle Pfeiffer performance since
Dark Shadows. I don't, I don't, I don't understand most of her character. Really all the characters,
except for Robert De Niro, are fleshed out not at all. And he is fleshed out through
this very hackneyed voice over that's done because he's writing his memoir and it's trying
to convince you that this very morally repellent person isn't that bad but it never really
works... Yeah.
And so the comedy it doesn't come from a place of the violence, the comedy isn't working
at a heightened extreme it's coming from all these things that don't really fit in because
you're still concerned about the fact that everyone in this family, The Family of the
title, is pretty awful. They're all-they're all terrible people.
No, and so it's really difficult to really be on their side or understand what their
going through because they're go to reaction to everything is violence and anger so even
the fish-out-of-water part of the comedy doesn't really work because you're really on the side
of everyone who hates them. This would be a really terrible like "Meet
the Americans" like movie I can't imagine what a French audience would think about this
movie. And that's weird because Luc Besson, he got
his name from the French films so it doesn't, it really didn't make a lot of sense to me
that it would be so viciously anti-France at times and um it's also just weird because
you know Robert De Niro is an actor who lives in this genre you know it's what made him
and he comes into this and you know did you think that he was returning to form or just
kind of looking for a way that he could phone it in?
Well I think it's been a long time since we like have really seen Robert De Niro cranking
out great performances left and right. I really liked him in Silver Linings Playbook ah last
year um and I think at some point I have to rectify with myself okay Robert De Niro is
now a working actor you know ah and that's what he's doing and I don't think he's terrible
in this but he's definitely not giving this his A-game and the movie itself plays on the
fact that he has performed these amazing roles quite literally in the film.
It does but it's just, it's still just one of those things where you know you see Robert
De Niro and you see the mobsters and everything and you just kind of hold out that hope but
it's just so, it 's so bland and he's just so kind of joyless and everyone feels a little
joyless like that I mean even though Michelle Pfeiffer is chewing the scenery it's not because
she's having fun with it, it just seems like she doesn't know what else to do.
Yeah, I completely agree with you but I, I, I enjoyed that she was trying something ah...
Because in a movie like this that's all you can really hope for?
I feel like I've given up hope on Robert De Niro to do a mob role that's any good anymore...
Right. Because his, that's where he feels safest
and directors are relying on him feeling safest in that role and never want him to do anything
really outside of you know his realm so ah I was disappointed but I, I feel like I've
grown into that disappointment. Yeah well unfortunately I think that's a pretty
good summation of The Family as a whole for both of us.