The Squid and the Whale (2005)

The Squid and the Whale is The Misadventures of Margaret meets Ordinary People (sort of). Everyone's acting is very good (esp. Jeff Daniels channeling John Hurt as a bushy-faced, pedantic English professor) but I wish the moral of the story (squid and whale locked in mortal combat) had been less subtle; the ending is kind of weak. (I blinked and almost missed it.) This is basically the riveting and painful chronicle of a couple's divorce and how to do it all wrong -- parents promoting their priggish and selfish agendas and conflicting their two sons by involving them in everything they should not even know about. Particularly ironic is how the clueless, self-important father advises his oldest son to "play the field" sexually because he wished he had done so at that age. Last but not least, the youngest son clearly has emotional problems (swearing and drinking and acting out sexually in public -- eww!) that are never addressed. This movie makes me even more squeamish than In the Company of Men because adults who should know better do nothing and allow their sons to begin their careen down the same ill-begotten path. It's a movie that will stick with you and make you think. Maybe if we had more movies that so authentically showed the psychological destruction of divorce, we'd have less of it and more couples working harder at their marriage than pretending they did so they can seek their lost adolescence. I'd award 4 stars for the acting but I mark it down for the eww! factor. 3.5 stars.