someone laughed at this?

Rating: 1/10 (6 February 2007)

My anticipation was that this movie would have been a comedy. Indeed, it is subsumed under comedy, which to me indicates that I'm going to LAUGH. That didn't happen. As soon as I saw the cast, of course Steve Carell popped out and after his performance in The Office and in 40-Year-Old Virgin, I was expecting something that'd make my tummy rumble. However, none of that happened. I want to know where the humour is in this movie. At best, you get the elitist humour one expects from these motion picture festivals. Perhaps it lived up to that. Instead of humour, I was wanting to turn off the movie because I was so often embarrassed for the character, and not the kind of embarrassment characteristic of Carell's behaviour on The Office. This embarrassment was just pathetic. I'm certain that objections to my opinion will come in the form of "But this is dark humour." Dark humour? It was dark, in its own jejune way, considering how jejune every character was, except for the divorcée mother. Anyway, even dark humour should involve some sort of irony more intelligent and less visible than the father's commitment to an idiotic system for achievement. As far as acting goes, I give out top marks to everyone except for the adolescent male. His "breakdown" after that predictable plot "twist" about his dreams wasn't believable at all. (Indeed, I didn't know that he'd be colourblind, but you could just tell that his dream, like everyone else's, would go unfulfilled.) In sum, I'm glad that I burned this film, because if I'd paid for it, I'd be even more upset about watching a "comedy" that has no humour.