evening and welcome to another thrilling episode in the show we call fistful of popcorn i'm bob brown and i have our regular panelists here i should say for those who are new to the show this is a movie discussion show where we just talk about films in our own way we don't do thumbs up thumbs down three stars four stars we just debate the merits and demerits we have carol welsh to my right marilyn campbell to my left and to her left janet stern and tonight we're going to discuss a film that's in theaters it's been there for maybe a week or so i think mary it's fairly new captain fantastic and janet do you want to give a brief summary   he is he has directed this film which is somewhat based on his own parents all experiences but also his own childhood in the mother was a little bit off the grid and offer rocker he has cast  mortensen as the father of six children and they not only live off the grid but off the sewer lines and they don't go to school they are homeschooled they are sort of like special forces training they do training athletic training they're very strong they're very resourceful and they're very well read politically oriented much very very leftist and i don't think it's giving too much away to say that their mother dies she's also been involved in raising them this way this is in oregon and so what happens is that the father has to take the six children to the mother's funeral back to where her parents live in new mexico so they have to go from our going to new mexico and you sort of see the children spirally being exposed to the outside world and meeting up with different kinds of people in different experiences including some very very touching scenes with their grandparents so i leave it there because i think the rest can be discussed yeah  think i went into theater for and i watched everything until the credits came up for the opening film and it was not the film that i was supposed to see quicker i mean it was ok with me because i was already sitting among some real think the movie generally takes the children's upbringing in as a good one and there might be some you know a little bit of adjustment you continue to make better but in general this father is doing the best for his why i thought i thought the father although to go is a very attractive figure and he's a good actor i had no problem with the acting i thought the premise of the movie i found a  that oh we should all be free except to disagree with him and they had you know they had to toe the line there so i really dislike the spirit can i just say i don't think that's true throughout this does become to tauren  places but in the beginning there's a sequence where he starts playing the guitar and the most rebellious of the children doesn't want to play what they're playing he's not interested first of all he's rebellious but he starts thumping on a piece of wood right and i think the father let that be there is very open to that so i think they were trying to show that he wasn't always dictatorial yeah i didn't really buy it i mean you take your family out into the middle of the woods and you don't let your children have any sort of social interaction with other children with any other people actually and i think you've got young little kingdom there and you get to rule it the way you want well with in the one of the skills he gave them was the skill to think think for themselves and to rebel as you say i mean in the end they were in a position to question things so you have the oldest son who has to talk to his mother behind his father's back so to speak about going to college and he says he's going to go off and do his own thing so that they haven't been damaged by this they're not automatons and not robots i think the father wants them to be that i don't know i mean you know i know i  way the father was the mother has left to go to a mental hospital three months before the movie begins and she's a buddhist and i think that that with her and him there was more of a balance between buddhist you have to be one with nature or you have to you know three that you have to be you have to let things be and that sort of accepted and was it was a balance and then and an other thing is that i didn't grow up in a very large family but i i reached catholic and there's a lot of very very large families in my immediate social area i was six kids you have to lay down some rules there's r there's no way you can live life in complete the complete chaos it would be if all six kids did what they wanted when they wanted and i don't disagree with you about the yes or no about the film but i do not agree that it was the film's point of view that this was the best way to raise children i don't think the film felt that at all i agree with you i think yes they come they come to some sort of right there's a balance they're looking for a balance well i think that's true i mean there is a certain amount of showing maybe the children are not that well prepared to face the world although i think overall the films point of view was that this was a good upbringing although like i said there is some and the child who is rebellious and the two boys who are sort of middle school age the other to use the sons of his sister and you are not yet his nephews are not particularly well drawn i mean other and they're not desired they don't do than never actually eventually yes but he's been shown it by the experience of his kids he's been shown to cause he almost kills one of his children yeah but if you think of the portrayal of the seems very bill and instead it seems admirable for him to not accept that and want to go to the funeral and make it make make a scene so but i think that the grandfather begins to soften when you see that he does have a reporter with the kids he he's out there have attempting to do yoga with the kids and real rolling on the grass and laughing and and obviously providing a sympathetic ear to their complaints about deb and he seems that that he could be a good dad it's just that he's been driven to extremes because it seems like his daughter and son in law took these kids off into the washington i believe is washington state yes believe me when's the last fifteen years ago and they haven't seen them since they've only ha sporadic perhaps phone calls once in a while and they haven't had been able to visit or been able to have them visit new mexico and that seems way a very hard thing to do but it could be that that was the door's decision yeah we well we keep saying it's a joy and the father keeps saying it's a joint decision it was a joy because we don't know we never meet the mother we do in little snippets in his imagination  imagination but his excuse for going along with this was that since she is bipolar and this is one of her manic episodes that he thinks maybe bringing her out here away from the pressure world well lead to a cure but then he does just the opposite and that's what he realizes in the end that this was a mistake and he said well i'd like it could could be there you know there's no cure for being bipolar no no there's only medication to make your mood swings less i lot of people who are bipolar don't care for the medication so because it makes my feel very gentle and he had this been his idea and his alone yeah then i would have found the change in him totally unbelievable but the front because the wife was in on it or even perhaps propelled it and he may have gone along with it thinking yeah this would be a good thing to do then i saw his transition back to balance it's more believable otherwise would it have been and that's where i think what i thought the film the turns that it takes toward the end sort of redeemed for me in that you see these transitions going back and forth and so it gives a little more rounded of the characters at first i thought it was going to be totally a diatribe against against  or against child abuse something like that but it's there's a new wants balance and you know i think that i think to me it's more believable that the wife rebelled so much against something if he had been if their political orientation or their was very right wing and sort of survivalist and would you have felt differently view society that they have different reactions first they go to some fast food restaurant where they're all eager to try burger and fries right iraqi after a milkshake  whole ready to plunge in and then when they're at their uncle and aunt sally was watching big kids play some sort of video game i they look horrified right but they write they don't understand how you could vacuum even be attractive and i they have this back and forth and i think it does show that in some ways however they were brought up in however strictly and they were put through their paces that they do have their own minds and  little athlete but you know i mean this guy is such a sure like for example in the scene where they're at the sister's house and he decides they they say something about the sister and brother in law saying your kids are not getting a good education so then he shows them up by questioning their kid about the bill of rights and then bringing his eight year old in and who can recite the bill of rights by by heart as well as explain what it means and i think that is humiliating your host and i think you know that's rude i think this i was rude that's true terro but he's on the defensive to begin with learn whether or not it gives them social skills is another it can be i think homeschooling can be effective i think it depends a lot on you know the parents some but that's what the the other hopes the other against the other ar most people in this country are not terribly happy about public schooling in their area and what their kids are learning or not learning in school that i think might really ring a bell for a lot of people bad kid in middle school and a kid in high didn't look back behind me to see what kinds of people were growing but at least i was in a theater where it was a mixed generational audience rather than what we're used to people in theater in the theater of the grandparents age  think it was a young fella behind me because when i went to sit down in the dark i suddenly felt this thing on my arm and this kid had thrown his leg up on the oh come on what are the rest of the chair i was sat around a bit yeah i think the grandparents are like it when he well i guess this is a spoiler i want to say it towards the end of the film he says oh yes grandfather you're right i'm not and it good for these children and sort of walk song by that i well i thought this is a guy if extremes  and he was abused as a child so that's another way and that's really when i talked about you know picking the balance so i'm going to have this scene even a scene in which one of his children is very endangered but no way she survived it hospitals one of the kids sites his particular feelings about hospitals which is you don't go around go right but in the end it's a doctor i know is saying saint and it's in a hospital that one of his children is saved right and and yet he's still voted so totally devoted to every member of that family yeah yeah yeah i think that's that's part of the message is that that however harsh their situation is living off the grid that it's a family they're a wonderful unit they really are devoted to one another big they you are one another they entertain one another that they have the kind of  family that lots of that contrast with the aunt nuncle where they have to bribe the kids to put down the electronic device at the dinner table that's the that's whatever whether you're christian or some sort of crazy militia person no whatever a lot of people are wanting to get back to some of that sort of sense of family and they think that the modern world in the distractions of it are what's killing it so but you do need some sort of balance i guess i didn't the father keeps the church close enough yes he does and then a less appealing place he can't smell it in an apartment in lower manhattan and won't let them out because he thinks the world is corrupt and i don't think that this was that much different although he well it's healthier it's all well i thought it was an entertaining film i saw in some of the green with janet though that did feel like plot points were sort of placed carefully but that's