MovieChat Forums > About Schmidt (2003) Discussion > Very Depressing Movie (spoilers)

Very Depressing Movie (spoilers)

posted 9 years ago by brooksshows
9 replies | jump to latest

This movie was difficult for me to get through. At the 9-minute mark, I seriously wanted to make it stop. It was just one huge emotive montage of this poor man's life with nothing much to show for it. At the 45-minute mark, it wasn't getting much better but at least something happened. At the half-way point, I would have given this movie a soft 4. It totally blew chunks the first half.

The second half was much better but it was about 40 minutes until the end before I had my first LOL moment. A few more laughs then a boring and uncreative end. This movie reminded me a lot of Terms of Endearment but it wasn't nearly as good. I ended up giving it a 7 on the sheer weight of Kathy Bates performance (and nude scene). Wow... Never dreamed I would be bailing a movie out of the crapper on the basis of Kathy Bates nude, but... that seems to be the case here!

It just wasn't a great movie and it bordered on totally sucking. My first inkling of annoyance came with the main character writing to the poor African child... going on and on about his problems to a kid who wonders where his next meal is coming from. Who is that narcissistic?

Then there was his wife's funeral and all the expenses.. this guy was an insurance man! He didn't have his wife covered to the hilt in burial insurance? WTH?

Next was the whole scene in the RV park, where a man left his wife in their RV alone with a man he had just met, to go make a beer run? Really? In real life, the two men would have gone together, it's just social protocol.

Overall, the scenes just seemed to drag on forever without any real point. Lots of 'small talk' which, I presume, was supposed to reinforce the sadness of the main character. I felt they spent way too much time in the beginning of the movie on that and would have liked to have seen more at the end in terms of some closure between father and daughter. We never really got that. He gave his toast, which was good until the end and it was like he dumped a turd with "I'm pleased!" The daughter thumbed her nose at that and next she's hugging his neck goodbye... seeya round Dad! No closure at all.

[–] jhill804 9 years ago

For a guy with the cowboy from Big Lebowski as his avatar, I would've thought you'd appreciate small talk and a movie that didn't go anywhere.

I don't have the time to explain the movie to you, but I would recommend staying away from other Alexander Payne movies if you didn't like this one.

I will say that the character was shallow. His life was shallow. But his life did have meaning, whether he knew it or not. And that's what the ending was about.

[–] brooksshows 9 years ago

And for a guy with a blank as his avatar it's fitting you would appreciate this emotive load of boredom.

As for Payne, I liked Nebraska but you are right, he isn't one of my favorites.

I get that his life had meaning and that's what the ending was about... that wasn't my complaint. There were just too many stupid implausibilities that I couldn't reconcile. I mentioned these.. no burial insurance on his wife, and him a big time insurance man. The letters to his sponsored child about his trivial problems.. the beer run where he is left alone in the RV with another man's wife who he had just met... weird crazy things that just wouldn't have happened in real life.

[–] SDmovielover 9 years ago

If you don't see those things as plausible in real life, then I think you see life through a different lens than many of us who liked the movie. For one, I just don't understand your list of implausibilities.

First of all, as an insurance man, Schmidt would know that having life insurance for burial expenses on an aging wife is not really worth the cost. It's not like insurance for catastrophes like your house burning down where the costs to replace are enormous. In this case, mathematically it is likely better to just put the money for premiums in a savings account instead. Schmidt likely knows how much his insurance company makes off of these (crappy) policies. The point of this scene was that he was just 'cheap', at least in the eyes of his daughter. Schmidt HAS plenty of money, he just doesn't want to spend it on a dead person.

The letters about his trivial problems; Don't you notice how many people in this world live miserable and superficial existences like Schmidt, and how disconnected they are from real world problems? It looked to me like these scenes were describing the motives and actions of millions of clueless privileged Americans.

And regarding the 'leaving your wife with another man they just met', I just didn't see it. The 3 of them had built a reasonable level of trust of a couple of hours, the husband was drunk, the RV was close enough to other RVs that they were not alone in the middle of nowhere, and the husband trusted his wife (rightfully so it turned out) to not accept the advances of Schmidt if he turned out to be a creep. So what's the big deal? In your world, people don't leave other people of the opposite sex alone with someone for 10 minutes? Maybe 7 times out of 10 that doesn't happen, but to say it 'would have never happened' makes me scratch my head.

Also, I'm not even following you in general. Your post title is that the movie is 'very depressing', then you go on to describe how bored you were (so do you mean you were personally depressed by your own boredom?), and then you say your real problem is that you couldn't suspend your disbelief. Which is it?

[–] brooksshows 9 years ago

The movie was depressing and boring, and I did have to suspend disbelief. I was bored because the depressing character moped around for half the movie before anything really happened. When he slugged the guy for sleeping with his wife was the first moment I noticed Jack Nicholson was alive.

I still find it incredibly hard to accept a world-class insurance agent isn't going to think about the funeral expenses of he and his spouse and have that planned for. You may have a point about some political statement on privileged Americans, that's what it felt like... some forced political statement trying to be made instead of a realistic portrayal of how people really are. No one is so narcissistic as to think of helping an unfortunate child by lamenting about that bonus you didn't get! It was ridiculous.

And the RV scene, are you kidding me? You would leave your wife with the stranger instead of inviting the stranger to ride along? ...That's just plain stupid if you ask me. Even if I had been Schmidt in that situation, I think I would have voluntarily suggested I go with the husband, it's just 'social protocol' as I said before. I would have felt creepy about it, and that's exactly how it came across.

[–] frogca 8 years ago

I agree with you it felt unrealistic and creepy. And then I spent 6 months in a community of people who live the trailering life. If you're part of the group, there's a lot of trust, so I have to say on second watch that it was more plausible than I first thought. They could have had some cues to explain that cultural context if they wanted, though.

[–] Planet-38 9 years ago

I have met people that are very trusting of strangers, that seem nice when they meet. They do tend to be from small communities where everyone pretty much knows everyone else. But, they can also be from larger cities. They take people at face value.

If they feel that they are good people, then they believe that they attract other good people. Only bad people have to worry about getting involved with other bad people. "If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas" so to speak. My ex is that type.

Since Warren was emotionally stunted, he mistook kindness as flirtation. Lots of individuals in the real world do the same every day.

And Warren was cheap. He didn't even buy himself decent frozen dinners, just bulk crap. And, he was self-centered - he expected his daughter to take care of him as his wife had.

And the movie was "boring" (your words) because life is generally uneventful. Most people don't deal with exploding cars, fist fights (look at the way Warren fights), car chases, or bank heists.

What closure is offered in life on a usual basis? Parents and children fall out all the time and never resolve their issues. And, as to no resolution between Warren and Jeannie? What had changed in their relationship? Warren was still distant, judgmental, and disapproving. Jeannie felt no connection to him in anyway, except genetically.

Warren did go through some emotional growth (he realized he hadn't been the best of husbands), and did realize that, if only to one small, far away child, his life did have some meaning.

-------------------

Getting You Satisfied
(One way or another)

[–] chas437 9 years ago

Life is very depressing, and it ends badly.

We should praise the unapologetic realism of About Schmidt. This is material that may be distasteful to some, but the filmmaker is being truthful to a fault. These characters make us uncomfortable because thy are so real. Payne has lifted the use of caricature to high art.

Some have compared AS to American Beauty, but with more subtle tactics. I'd say its even more subversive and perhaps an even more cruel vision of middle America. This because we actually know people like the characters in AS.

This film isn't for everyone, yet its filmmaking at its most real.

[–] Ironman54 9 years ago

I agree. I first saw it in a movie theatre just after my divorce. I still had children to raise and retirement seemed far in the future. I did not appreciate the movie then, not even as a cautionary 'message'. Skip ahead all these years and all I gotta say is this film is brilliant.

[–] mafrie 8 years ago

Actually to those who say there were too many implausible characters and scenes I have to disagree. I've gone on cross country road trips and met people almost exactly as goofy and quirky as these people at camp grounds and gone to weddings and family dinners where people were just as mean and crazy. I worked with a guy at Macys,just like Randall who was a mullet head, offered me a ride home, couldn't get his car keys to work, called tow to discover it wasnt his car, he went to the wrong
one. What I mean is that people do exist like this and to portray them on film sometimes they can seem. exaggerated