Won’t Back Down Review
Ever see a cartoon that looks and acts like a real movie? Now you can see a real movie that looks and acts like a cartoon!
I wasn’t sure which movie to see the other night. I was torn between this one and the House at the End of the Street. They both looked annoying, but since I have been watching S2 of the Walking Dead lately I figured I had had my fill of horror this week. Also HATES looks chock full of exactly the lamo teenage cutesy kids that make me wish for the annihilation of the human race. When I realized my dream girl Maggie Gyllenhaal was in this one I figured “How painful could this be?”
The answer, unfortunately, was pretty painful. I will be the first to admit that I am not the target demographic most chick flicks strive to attract, being the most macho man you will ever meet who loves Cyndi Lauper music and plays with toy soldiers. However, the last two years of movie reviews has expanded my appreciation of movies outside of my normal genres and I like to think that while I might not enjoy a movie type in particular in general I am capable of recognizing quality work when I see it and in my opinion, I did not just see it.
The movie runs a massive 121 minutes and believe me, you will feel every one of them. The pacing drags on like trying to push your car to the gas station and accidentally left your parking brake on. The “drama” is so tertiary and uninspired that you might forget to keep breathing. The story attempts to show character development, but the main issue with that is the main character Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie) is so cartoonish and over the top that she literally eclipses every other character on the screen with her. It’s like trying to create a beautiful Lite-Brite flower but the light in the center has been replaced by a 400 watt flood. The only character who is even remotely interesting is Nona (Violet Davis), the teacher, but she is only able to shine in scenes where Jamie is absent.
This is not a criticism on Maggie Gyllenhaal, whom I consider a talented actor, but rather on writer/director Daniel Barnz (the Cutting Room, Beastly, Phoebe in Wonderland) for his creation of a working class super woman who crushes every obstacle in front of her with the relentless wheel of her steamroller personality. Her ability to beat down every problem in her path gets ridiculous and manages to more or less drain the drama from the entirety of the film.
The rest of the characters (with the exception of Violet Davis) are two dimensional cartoon characters as well, but none so much as the villain. Barnz wanted to create a movie about improving grade schools in America, so who does he tap for the villain? A selfish and uncaring school board? A corrupt city government? Local gangs and drug dealers making the school a living hell? No. How about…the teachers union??? Really? He makes the bad guys literally the teachers and the head of the union a selfish egomaniac who is only in it for those big teacher bucks. 
That is like creating a Death Star and crewing it with Care Bears (instead of having it be defeated by them. Empire logo from the Star Wars T Shirt collection). The only way he could have made the main bad guy more pointlessly evil is if they had raided his house and found he had been fertilizing his garden with dead babies. It seems pretty obvious that Barnz has some kind of axe to grind with organized labor.
The story. Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal-Stranger than Fiction, Donnie Darko, the Dark Knight) is a working class single mom who dresses like a stripper does during the day and works two jobs to support her child Malia (Emily Alyn Lind-Enter the Void, the Secret Life of Bees, J Edgar), who goes to THE WORST SCHOOL IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION! I’m not kidding about this. It’s almost like Barnz wanted to drive some anti-teacher union message home and took every example of horrible education ever and rolled it into one school. Also, Malia’s specific teacher Deborah (Nancy Bach-Dogma, Black Dahlia, the Bread, My Sweet) is painted as another stupidly evil and exploitative character for no reason. Basically Darth Vader to the union leaders Grand Moff Tarkin. Anyway, Jamie wants Malia to actually learn to read and tries assorted things to get her into another school or another class but is shut down by the most exciting movie antagonist possible, bureaucracy.
Meanwhile teacher Nona Alberts (Viola Davis-the Help, Disturbia, Solaris) is trying to find inspiration and help her own challenged son Cody (Dante Brown-America, Prodigy Bully, I Heart Shakey) with school. Jamie finds out about an obscure law allowing parents and teachers to take over a school if they think it is failing and doesn’t let the fact that it has never ever worked before sway her. She and Nona go through a long (long, long) process of collecting signatures and recruiting teachers. Meanwhile, the big, bad teachers union shows up in the person of sympathetic front woman Evelyn Riske (Holly Hunter-the Incredibles, the Piano, Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou. Am I the only one who finds her accent and slight lisp really sexy?) and Satan level evil union head Arthur Gould (Ned Eisenberg-Limitless, Last Man Standing, Million Dollar Baby). They do what they can to stop the pair from helping the school with a clear objective of destroying kids lives (Gould even says something to the effect of “When kids start paying union dues I’ll start to care about them”. Duh).
Honestly, that’s the story. The rest is a long, drawn out grind towards the inevitable and heartwarming ending. Minor obstacles are overcome, but they are more speed bumps than barricades. The final dramatic scene is the school room board meeting where the vote is split straight down straight white people verses alternative lifestyle and minority people. Then, with the magic of a jump cut scene, the school is miraculously transformed into the greatest educational institution since the founding of Harvard (it’s amazing what you can accomplish with some editing software).
The stars. I fell in love with Maggie Gyllenhaal when she did Stranger that Fiction (if you happen to read this, Maggie, I would risk extreme injury for the chance to have dinner with you), and she remains as hot and cool as ever (if disappointingly clothed). One star. I thought both she and Viola Davis did a good job with the mediocre roles they were handed, and the Nona Albert sub plot was as close as I came to being interested in this film. One star. I also thought both Emily Alyn Lind and Dante Brown did a great job as kid actors. One star. Total: three stars.
The black hole. Paced like standing on line at the DMV in Hell. Two black holes. Ultimately boring, with nothing really to sink my teeth into story wise. One black hole. Over the top, cartoonish characters with little to no depth. One black hole. Demonizing an organization that really doesn’t deserve it, and staffing it with Satan’s minions. One black hole. Painfully predicable in every regard. One black hole. Stupidly manipulative on almost every level. One black hole. Using a film to foster a political agenda. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
A grand total of five black holes. Not really worth seeing in a theater IMO. I’m not saying you will wish for a clean death. It’s not THAT bad. It’s just that this is the film equivalent of eating 0% unflavored yogurt. No flavor, no texture, and while it may help sustain you ultimately you are spooning spoiled milk into your mouth (guess what’s on my menu for lunch today? I hate dieting). You might actually enjoy it, if you think that the teachers unions are directly responsible for the downfall of the American education system or enjoy the idea of wading through a massive bureaucracy to accomplish a nebulous goal. Date movie? Probably not, unless your date is hyper active and you have tried everything short of rufies to calm her down. Bathroom break? This film is so bland and uneventful I can’t for the life of me remember a specific point that seems more worthless than the rest of the film. Feel free to cut out any time. It’s a long movie, so odds are you will have to.
Thanks for reading, and sorry for such a tepid review. They can’t all be winners, and blase movies inspire blase reviews. There’s a lot of new stuff out right now, but none of it really excites me. I’ll go see something soon. I suspended my watching of all the TOS episodes so I can finally see S2 of the Walking Dead on NetFlix. Awesome. I am working on a new Star Trek post soon that should be fun however. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post any comments on this review or movie here, and if you have off topic suggestions or questions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
