Into The ...Camera?

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2007)

At first, I suffered the delusion that the main character was an annoying go getter who worried too much about people being selfish and materialistic. But little does the audience know, Sean Penn is just an A-hole and likes to shove family drama in your face till you're drenched in tears. However long it takes you to get over the fact that the movie has a message and that if you're one of those people to judge the character by his actions only, and not the lesson to be learned in the end, then just leave the movie theater and don't look back. Honestly, this film is what film makers should look forward to conceiving and retiring from.
Although Emile Hirch doesn't put together an Oscar worthy performance, one that will turn heads like Cate Blanchett's winded and terrific Elizabeth, or Benicio Del Torro's addict antics, he sustains character throughout and gives a performance that is memorable in the fact that as the man he plays grows, you see him grow as well. And speaking of the character, he's straightforward but still very intriguing. Alexander Supertramp otherwise known as Alex Maccendless, needed an escape from his home sweet home, for reasons that seem to be on the surface, but are actually revealed to be deeper in the end.
The people around him, the people he meets and loves and changes are so real and a-typical, that the actors seem lost in some kind of delusion that they may actually be a hippie, or a man that just got busted for watching illegal satellite television. I'd go on but I woudn't want to spoil any kind of archetype you may be waiting for.
The movie, with it's much needed and refreshing meaningful shots of our protagonists point of view expressed through heavy nature watching and blunt nudity, is something that you do not see in cinema anymore, unless it's done badly by an indie or art director trying to be angst. It feels as if this movie leaps ahead of its budget and production and attempts to send you it's final message, revealed in its final chapter, as an actual morally defined and virtuous one. Though a big deal that Penn made with the main character was that he looked into the camera a lot which i fond strange, but oddly balanced at the same time. And I mean balanced as in the fact that it may have taken itself a little seriously at times, but it did loss en up a bit, god bold, and the fourth wall, though still broken, gave a realness to the character.
Though the ending will leave you feeling sore and some numb, you will eventually come around to learn that the lesson that must be learned, must be lived first, and if it takes a cast like this to express it on film, then by damn, let it be learned and expressed.
"True Happiness can only be achieved when you have someone to share it with."