St. Vincent Review part 1
Feel good movie of the year!
Well, not really at least for most of it. In fact large swaths of it will bum you out like a fire at an anti-depressant and super soft bunny factory. This is not the movie to see while on an alcohol bender or having been miserable, single, and bitter for a few years and bitching about it incessantly in your nerd blog (dodged that bullet).
However not every movie has to draw a smiley face on your spelling test and give you a gold star for the achievement of not breaking your hip falling out of bed this morning. Life is hard and it’s OK to show us a movie that reflects that once in a while if only to give all the happy happy joy joy movies some contrast. And I’m not saying that St. Vincent is totally a bummer. If watching a irascible old man drink, whore, smoke, cheat, steal, and gamble his life away while secretly having a heart of gold (well, silver or perhaps silver-ish. There might be some copper in there too. Coppers good, right? Very useful in electronics) and bond with the wimpy kid next door this movie will work for you.
I am of course a huge Bill Murray fan and love him in any role. Like the late great Robin Williams he is known for his comedy but honestly really shows his talents when doing a serious role. The writing on this film was top notch with a special gold star for the dialog which was brilliant.
Most times a kid in a movie (even kids movies) is the first sound of the suck train leaving the station but this kid Jaeden Lieberher did the impossible for me: he managed to really entertain and engage me while not giving my suspended a disbelief a nose bleed. 
Kids in films tend to suck because they just don’t have the acting chops and you can’t take a serious situation with appropriate seriousness knowing Hollywood would never let a kid die or have anything really bad happen to him or her. Kids always feel fake and out of place and destroy any gravitas a film might have had like a rodeo clown Photoshopped into DaVinci’s Last Supper (I’m looking at you, 8 year old Anakin Skywalker. Image comes from the many Star Wars t-shirts I have in my collection)
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