Poor Paul.


Anyone else feel sorry for Paul who is thrust into a situation like this, proceeds to be fantastic with his kids, begins to wise-up in his own world, sacrificing his (utterly smoking) sexual partner because he needs to tend to his new 'family', is emotionally manipulated by Moore who later admits she is literally just using him as a dildo while he laments that he is starting to fall for her. And then, Moore, the instigator, gets away with a grovelling apology and paul is rejected for trying the same thing and characterised as some creep trying to penetrate someone else's family despite them coming to him. Te last we get of him is him dressed in black with dark lighting and heavy shadow (to scream "he's the bad guy now"), we get a *beep* you" by the kids that is played for laughs and the last we see of him is an emotionally distraught, confused and abandoned man about to get on his motorcycle. They probably missed the after credit scene when he drives his bike onto some train tracks or something.
I'm so confused, is the hypocrisy of family an intentional observation or what, because most of the people i saw it with had the exact same reaction.

"World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door."

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What makes you say Moore was the instigator? They were both pretty complicit, actually... I thought they both just got caught up in the heat of the moment, and when it exploded, Jules had to choose her fling or her family. It was pretty obvious that she knew it was a mistake, and had to choose her family and face the fire....they both got more pain than they could have imagined, but then they caused more pain too...

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Yes! The treatment of Paul is why I had to find a forum and sound off about it. This movie totally DOGGED him! He was a nice guy I felt so bad for him. And when the daughter told him she thought he would be "better" omg I wanted to die. The ending just left me totally upset.

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I did feel bad for Paul, but he also brought everything on himself. Whether Jules instigated the affair or not, he could just as easily have made the wise choice to stop it.

Can you really blame the kids for being upset with him? They sought him out and were starting to let him into their lives as a father figure--and then he participates in an affair with Jules, causing a rift in the family. I can't blame them for being disappointed with his actions (not necessarily him as a person--I quite liked his character but he did make some poor choices). They were just as angry with Jules too, for the record, but they have more of a history with her as a permanent fixture in their lives, so they were less willing to just cut her off. It makes perfect sense. I also don't think it's implied that Jules just gets off scot-free, either, but rather that the family is going to try to work together to repair what's happened.

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Being a dad myself, it seemed unbelievably cruel. They give a man access to his kids, and then he is tossed aside and written out of the story.

Sure, he had a relationship with Julianne Moore's character, but she wanted it as well, and she was motivated to do it because Nice was being so awful to her.

He seemed like he was made the fall guy of the story.

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