When their parents announce that they are splitting up 16 year old walt & 12 year old frank are relegated to alternating weekends & a jumbled calendar of mom or dad nights. The kids are left to grapple with the confusing & conflicted feelings that arise from the sudden collapse of their parents marriage. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 01/22/2008 Starring: Jeff Daniels Laura Linney Run time: 81 minutes Rating: R

The Squid and the Whale follows the divorce of Joan (Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me) and Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels, The Purple Rose of Cairo) as it wreaks havoc on the emotional lives of their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg, Roger Dodger) and Frank (Owen Kline, The Anniversary Party). Though there's no plot in the usual sense, the movie progresses with growing emotional force from the separation into the bitter fighting between Joan and Bernard and the hapless, floundering behavior of Walt and Frank, who act out through plagiarism, sexual acts, and drinking. Some viewers may find the ending too diffuse; others will appreciate that writer/director Noah Baumbach (Mr. Jealousy) doesn't wrap up the messiness of life in a false cinematic package. Either way, viewers will appreciate how the specificity of the personalities makes The Squid and the Whale so compelling, as Baumbach has drawn the characters with such detail, both engaging and off-putting, that they leap off the screen. Naturally, he's greatly helped by the cast: Linney, Eisenberg, Kline, and especially Daniels bite into these often unsympathetic portraits and give fearlessly honest performances, interlocked in both painful and funny ways--rarely have family dynamics been captured so vividly. If there was an ensemble Oscar, this cast would deserve it. --Bret Fetzer

I don't know how Laura Lindley does it but I can always count on her being in a great independent film. This one is wonderful though I still can't make sense of the ending. A couple divorce and the poor relationship between the couple and the boys disintegrate even further. This family wasn't content or happy before the divorce (which makes sense) but the divorce is an adjustment in itself. The father is a writer who can't get anything published while the mother is prospering. She finds other men to date and the father takes up with one of his college students. The older son admires his father while the younger boy vastly prefers his mother. So what happens? A lot, but it is not neatly wrapped up in a package. The movie begins and it ends. I would love to know who is the squid or the whale. That could provide more information, but it isn't clear. It is meant not to be clear so I will think a bit more about it. I'm sure this movie will be debated in college classrooms and essays for years to come.

THIS REVIEW IS ABOUT THE PACKAGING NOT THE FILM...

As happens far too often the copy of the DVD of this film I received arrived with the disc off the spindle and scratched to high heaven. Sony agreed to take it back but wanted me, in these days of high petrol prices, to take it out to a FedEx in the suburbs. They offered no alternative. And since the price it would of cost me in gas was more than I paid for the disc in the first place I decided against returning the unwatchable disc. Hence I couldn't review the film if I wanted to.

As for Sony shame on them for their lack of environmental consciousness...

The moral? Look before you leap. Think twice before you buy a Sony/Columbia product.

Call me Diogenes...

I was expecting great things from The Squid and the Whale. After all, critical buzz about the picture when it was released was good, and the film was nominated for some Golden Globes and and Oscar. Well, either my hopes were too high, or the film just wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be.

The film relates the disintegration of the Berkman family, who are living in 1980s Brooklyn. Father Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a pompous, know-it-all novelist who has begun the downward arc of his career path and is now teaching literature at a college. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), is the long-suffering mother of their two children. (But not TOO long-suffering. She's had several affairs.) When Bernard and Joan decide to call it quits, they bring children Walt (16) and Frank (12) in for a family conference to break the news. The children naturally find themselves taking sides. The duration of the movie shows how the children and their parents cope with the divorce and their changing lives.

What IS good about the film - all the performances are great, with Daniels in particular fully inhabiting Bernard's academic elitism and utter vanity. Bernard is just always so sure he's right about everything. Plus, he has an angry competitive streak and doesn't seem to want anyone else to win anything except him. (No wonder Joan was boinking other guys, eh?) In addition, the characters are rendered fully on the page, although continuous reinforcements of who they are (rather than who they will become?) become tiresome as the script grinds along.

What I didn't like - The plot isn't particularly compelling. We watch as the family breaks apart and how each member of the family deals with this event in different ways. But because I didn't like most of the characters, I found it difficult to care too much one way or the other. Also, I thought the movie was overly preoccupied with sex. Each character has their own manifestation of a sexual storyline, and that felt very contrived to me. In addition, there was alot of profanity, particularly from the youngest character, that I didn't think was necessary or added much to the story. But mostly, I didn't feel that enough HAPPENED. I didn't feel that the characters made any meaningful inner journeys or underwent any meaningful changes. I just felt like there was alot of extraneous junk in the script that could have been jettisoned in exchange for more of an actual plotline.

So, regardless of the film's critical acclaim, I can't recommend it. If I could get those two hours of my life back, I think I would.

For some reason, the mainstream avant garde seems to regard the dramedy as the quintessential genre. You know what I mean: the "almost comedy," the "quirky drama," the "unbelieveable reality." Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale is a good example of this genre. It's kind of like that other nearly mainstream movie of his, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Special Edition). This one is more realistic than The Life Aquatic, but it has that same kind of quirkiness. The characters are so entrenched in their stereotypes that they're almost humorous.

Jeff Daniels (who is amazing in this film) is the stereotypical English professor who pontificates on every subject as if he has the be-all-end-all opinion on everything. Meanwhile, his wife, the nice one, is just as messed up. And the kids, well, they are the epitome of dysfunction. Their role models--their parents--and incapable or relating on any level other than stupidity, and so they can't make competent decisions. The father gives the older one advice such as "Sleep with her and see what it's like. Then move on." (I'm paraphrasing here.) And the younger one can't decide who he is, except that he knows he's only 12 going on 21.

Here, the drama is more important than the comedy, and I don't think I laughed at all, but it's still that kind of movie. For me, I found it more disturbing than funny. In fact, everyone in this movie creeped me out, from the kids to the parents, and I guess that's the point.

Simply wonderful. For those who have grown up with exceptionally educated parents, be prepared for moments of cringing and wincing when viewing this movie. Most of all, The Squid and the Whale is for those who step back and are able to appreciate and have fun with the idiosyncrasies and annoyances of our own families. Baumbach's insight into the dysfunctional family is uncanny and, in turn, tells us how dysfunctional all of our families are. On the technical level, along with Wes Anderson and a few others, Noah Baumbach is at the forefront of what I believe to be a New American and Independent Cinema, where the actors, their words, expressions and actions are as powerful and real as the viewer meeting these people on the streets. Baumbach is a brilliant story teller of everyday life. Like Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, this movie does not follow the prescription of most movies as it is rarely eventful. For this it is real, and something we can all relate to. Yes, I agree with other reviewers, Jeff Daniels performance is terrific. Like Murray in Lost in Translation, his acting career seems to only have begun. I have also yet to see a movie in which Laura Linney was not spot on. As for the boys, I think we have two engaging independent movie stars for us to follow for the years to come. On a note about the title of the film, for New Yorkers, how great was it to mention the Museum of Natural History and in particular, the squid and the whale which used to be in that under lighted corner of the marine exhibit. Scared many of us as children, didn't it? Lastly, we have Brooklyn. Baumbach's hometown is depicted as it should be, a beautiful and equal borough to Manhattan in most respects.