Quote:
Originally Posted by
Patrick Sun 
Am I the only one that found it weird and offputting that Apatow put his young daughters in a film where their real mother is in the middle of a dalliance with infidelity and the disintegration of the family unit being part of the main plot setup in the last part of this film?
Filming on set surrounded by family and friends is a completely different experience than what we all see on screen. I doubt the younger daughter was even aware of what the movie was about, and I'm sure they sat the older daughter down and put everything into context. That's arguably less weird than parents that ship their kids off to be child stars in lots of other people's movies.
The entire sequence in San Marin county just had these unconvincing plot beats, and even poorer handling of George and Laura's romantic re-ignition after all these years, and the "oh-so-quick to boil" confrontation between George and Clarke within the course of an overnight stay. It didn't flow naturally, and the whole setup for the inevitable fallout just didn't pay off in a satisfying and dramatic manner. Perhaps they should not have even shown those confrontation scenes in the marketing/trailer for the film because you pretty much are just waiting for it to finally show up as the film is winding down.
It works if you view the whole Marin County span of the film in terms of the relationship between Ira and George. Laura, the Australian hubby, and the kids are used to reveal things about George and Ira. Ira has a human response, while George has a selfish response. Eric Bana's character is hilarious, but a bit of a caricature. Laura is a good mom, but she's a deeply flawed character.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mattCR
Besides which, I thought Ira had the ultimate response that was seemingly dismissed, a lot of people would have accepted "I told them he was going to be OK because.. I just didn't want to talk about that with your kids.. death and all.." about 80% of the parents I know would have completely accepted that, it would have diffused everything and they would have drove off..
Which would have worked fine, if it'd been the first response he tried. But Ira panicked through four or five failed responses before he landed on that one. By then, the cat was out of the bag so to speak.
