This is a family who doesn’t talk about things, who never shares true feelings. There are three grown-up children who are good intelligent people but deeply troubled; there is a father who tries to straighten them up and there is a mother who refuses to accept that there is a problem in the first place.
In details, it’s a story of a dysfunctional family: father Phil who is very strict and mother Lisa who follows her perfect-housewife-and-perfect-mother path denying completely whatever doesn’t fall into that. They have three children who spend their lives trying to make them proud or at least trying to be accepted by them. They are all troubled, but the parents don’t notice it. Oh the father notices that Tim gets drunk every day, but he simply deals with that by being glad that he has another son who he thinks is perfect; as Tim points out though, he is at a disadvantage because he doesn’t have another father to turn to, he only has one. Karen married the man she loves, but Tom is not happy in her parents’ home because he knows Phil doesn’t like him. Tim is always oppressed by this aura of superiority his father has. The other son Matt comes home with a fiancée, Allison, who is beautiful, rich, and deeply in love with him. Matt is also trying to be perfect to make his parents happy, but when Allison finds a letter and discovers that Matt is gay and leaves him, things go rapidly down. Allison doesn’t hate him, she’s a lovely girl and understands that as much as he says that he’ll try, there is nothing here that can be tried, he can’t change who he is and of course she can’t marry him, and Matt doesn’t know how to explain this to his parents. The night of his bachelor party, Matt drives his car into a pole in an attempt to kill himself. His ex-boyfriend Kyle comes to visit but Matt is not prepared to deal with this. He only tells his sister about Allison leaving him, without explaining the reason. When Tim confronts him, saying that there were no marks on the road and directly asking his brother if he did it on purpose, Matt walks out without a word and Karen yells angrily something like “what is wrong with you?”. Honestly, what is wrong with all the others, I wanted to say, because if what Tim suspects is true it is not something to simply ignore!!
I was very surprised that neither Tim or Karen ever had any suspicions, but at least Tim tried to talk about the accident. It’s more than the others did.
Matt knows he can’t go on lying and chooses to talk to his best friend Andy first. It’s very difficult, but he opens up and tells him that Allison left him because he’s gay. After a few seconds of silence, Andy reacts the right way, which is to keep talking to him about what they were talking about, meaning Matt’s problems, before stating that he is and has always been his best friend.
Tom learns from a doctor that his wife is pregnant and is planning to get an abortion. She never told him this, and he knows she wants to do it because she’s afraid of what her father might say, because Phil is always talking about planning and about money.
When they find Lisa crying, things move on quickly. She starts accusing Matt of embarrassing them all, after learning that Allison left him. She worries about what people might say if the wedding is called off. Matt can’t stand it anymore and tells her and everybody that she knows the reason, she’s known since she walked in on him and Kyle two years ago. He says it out loud now, forcing her to listen. He tells them not only that he is gay, but that he tried to kill himself. She won’t listen, won’t accept his words, and only tells him to apologize to Allison.
Matt runs to his room and Tim tells Phil to “just leave him alone”, I guess because he understands Matt better than anybody else, but that’s as far as their brotherly relationship is shown to us.
Tom can’t keep it inside any longer and tells it like it is in Phil’s face, saying that he can’t destroy his family (Tom’s) as he destroyed his own (Phil’s). That’s a good scene, a good speech, and when Phil says he doesn’t want to talk about it now Tom says “when are we gonna talk about it? when someone actually dies? Would that be better?”
He prepares to leave but Karen talks to him and after they talk they hug and I guess he’ll take her out of there and they’ll have their baby and manage like many parents have done before them.
That’s the last we see of Karen.
Phil goes to talk to Lisa but she’s still angry, saying that Matt humiliated them, that she sacrificed her life so her children could have a future, that it’s all “about us”. Phil asks her what does she wants, if she’d rather have him dead, but she doesn’t answer, instead she goes into a rage pulling down all the photographs on their wall, saying “it’s a lie”, meaning that life on the pictures, and when later Matt goes to talk to her she not only says that she doesn’t understand, but also that ‘she doesn’t know and she doesn’t wanna know’.
After a silent meal, Phil sees that Tim is picking up the pictures and putting them back together where they were, and silently helps him. That’s as far as their relationship goes, we don’t see anything more than that.
Matt calls Kyle asking him out for a coffee and a good talk, and we can guess he’ll accept because he seemed still in love with him, but we can’t be sure.
Another significant scene was when Phil asked Matt if it was true that he tried to commit suicide, and then asked him if he really thought that ‘they’d rather have him dead’, and Matt says that he doesn’t know, it’s hard to tell... I so understand this, the pain of saying it and the pain of admitting it.
At the end, Phil talks to Matt, trying to understand and telling him that he loves him.
With my great surprise and disappointment, there was nothing more. I think both Matt and Tim deserved a little more, and although I understand that Matt’s problem is the key to the movie, I also feel that Tim’s problem was serious too. When Matt runs to his room saying "go to hell" to his mother in his anger, and Tim says to his father "just leave him alone", you can read the desperation in him.
They were both troubled, but while Tim gave up and survived by drinking himself to death every day, Matt had tried to live the perfect life; while Tim had already tried to yell and make his father understand (unsuccessfully), Matt had never said a word, piling it all inside him.
In both cases it was a matter of accepting who they really are instead of what they wanted them to be. At least Karen had Tom, but Tim and Matt deserved a bit more. I’m not saying much, just a scene showing brotherly support, or a smile while they walk out, or something. Both brothers should have gone away, and they should have kept in contact. Escape from that prison, and be who they are.
But an end like this was not enough, it wasn’t an ending at all. It left me in a very low mood all day.
..
The actors were all good. Jim Carrey was not yet the famous rubber-face, and I liked him a lot here. I think he’s a great actor, has a real talent for showing emotions on his face, I’m glad from time to time someone calls him to do something serious - not necessarily dramatic, serious comedies would be good too. It’s probably just because I don’t find movies like ‘dumb and dumber’ the least funny..
One last thing: it's Tim that 'explains' the title while talking to his father, saying "I've done my time on Maple Drive"...
Tim-Jim Carrey
Allison-Lori Loughlin
Matt-William McNamara
Tom-David Byron
Phil-James Sikking
Lisa-Bibi Besch
ITA nel segno del padre
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