If there is one contemporary movement that I simply do not get, it is the Clever Comedy. It was started by a director that almost everyone likes but me, Wes Anderson, is continued through movies like Junebug. A lot of critics loved the film said that this was one the best of 2005. I hated it.
We'll have more on the Clever Comedy later, but to get through the plot (blessedly faster than the movie does) Junebug involves Madeline (Embeth Davidtz) a British art dealer traveling with her husband George (Alessendro Nivola) to his hometown in North Carolina. His family is a collection of colorful characters including George's sister, Ashley (Amy Adams) who is pregnant and immedatley is facinated by someone so upperclass and cultured. There are a lot of sublots. They help to make the movie too long, but it would have been too long at ten minuets.
This unoriginal material is presented in an Anderson-esq style, with simplistically etched "comic" characters and a lot of musical interludes. One thing I really hate about Clever Comedies is how the director always seems to think that he is smarter than the characters in his movies, but Junebug takes this to a new level. I am surprised that Southerns didn't protest this movie, because Morrison makes them all look like a bunch of shallow, dumb yokels. The movie isn't funny, and is worse than annoying, it's insulting.
Now, every single time I say something bad about Anderson, or even something bad about someone like Anderson, I set off a firestorm of contraversy (the Ann Coulter of the 10 people who read this). Sorry folks, but I can't sugarcoat this one- I just found this to be unbarably obnioxious. Maybe there is something in my background that makes me resist movies like this, or maybe the Keatonian deadpan humor I like is just incompatable with this style. I dunno, but I am convinced that humor aside, Junebug has nothing to say, other than people from the south are really, really stupid.
Junebug (2005)