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Three's Company »

Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play a divorcing pair of Brooklyn novelists in 1980's Park Slope that can't seem to help but have damaging influences on their two sons as they break apart from each other and attempt joint custody. The movie is brutal in its depiction of literary intellectuals as snobbish, self-involved and unafraid to spout conceited statements like "Kafka was one of my predecessors" in spite of their own non-starting careers. Daniels is brilliant in how well he portrays his character as being arrogant and self-involved yet you know that he thinks that he is raising his sons in an honest and enlightened way. His frank talks with them about his sex life, the failings of others and their mother's infidelities of course do more harm then good. Laura Linney, of course, is great as usual though in a more subdued role.

The two sons are played by two great young actors as well. Jesse Eisenberg plays Walt who is closer with his father and emulates his pretentions (my favorite line in the movie is another Kafka line when Walt naively describes a scene in Kafka's The Metamorphisis as being 'very Kafka-esque'). Meanwhile Owen Kline plays Frank who is closer to his mom and her new boyfriend (William Baldwin) and aspires to be a low-level tennis player much to his father's repugnance.

Though the movie takes place in the '80's, its location made me feel nostalgic for the late '90's when I lived in the same Park Slope neighborhood. And for an added bit of nostalgia, the title of the movie refers to the diorama installation in the great Whale room of the Museum of Natural History in New York.

Posted at December 6, 2005 05:41 PM