The Family Fang (2016)

[Winston T. Boogie]

Title: The Family Fang (2016)

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Mystery

Director: Jason Bateman

Cast: Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett, Marin Ireland, Kathryn Hahn, Jason Butler Harner, Alexandra Wentworth, Harris Yulin, Michael Chernus, Josh Pais, Grainger Hines, Jaiden Kaine, Linda Emond, Mackenzie Brooke Smith, Taylor Rose, Patrick Mitchell, Eugenia Kuzmina, Steve Witting, Scott Shepherd, Frank Harts, Genevieve Adams, Claire Glassford, Abigail Friend, Audrey Lynn Weston, Danny Burstein, Gabriel Ebert

Release: 2016-04-16

Runtime: 105

Plot: A brother and sister return to their family home in search of their world famous parents who have disappeared.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Not familiar with this one. I did watch another Bateman directed film- Bad Words. Pretty good.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

This was another picture I watched with my wife last week that she had read the novel and then wanted to watch the film.

I think this, even though it is only from 2016, is kind of a forgotten film. Or just something nobody saw. I noticed there was a Blu-ray for it but it rapidly went out of print and was a made on demand disc.

We both enjoyed this one. I liked it more than the other novel to film picture she chose, A Man Called Otto, mainly because this film was a better story, I thought. It also is sort of a mix of comedy, drama, and mystery which is something I tend to like. It also is well cast and is an odd story, which I also like.

It is basically about a family of four, a father and mother, daughter and son. The parents are bizarre performance artists that stage moments in public to shock and surprise people, mainly to get them to realize they should enjoy life because you never know what it might throw at you. They fully involve their kids in these performances which is obviously a strange way for a kid to grow up.

I enjoyed the performance art aspect of the story because you would absolutely get arrested and charged with a crime if you did stuff like this now. People would claim they were harassed, offended, traumatized...no way in hell you could get away with this stuff now. The subversive aspect of this is something that today just no longer exists. Note that most of these "performances" in the story are flashbacks and so took place in the 1970s. In this story, the parents are celebrated, at least in certain circles for their art.

The mystery kicks in when the parents leave to take a vacation and their car is found in a rest area covered in blood. The police rule it a homicide because there is a killer on the loose killing people in rest areas. However, the brother and sister are not certain because of the nature of the performance art their parents are famous for. This begins a search for them to discover if their parents are really dead.

My wife said the film basically begins in the middle of the story told in the novel. There was a lot more of the performance art stuff in the book from when the brother and sister were younger. So, quite a bit cut out of the novel for the film according to her.

Bateman and Kidman are quite good as the brother and sister. Bateman also directs. This is a very entertaining and offbeat film. I can see why Bateman wanted to turn it into a film.

If you want something different and you enjoy oddball characters and offbeat story, you probably would enjoy this. I can also see a lot of people just getting aggravated with this because these people are weird, live strange lives, and I think it will piss some people off.

While it is funny, again, probably would not label it a comedy. I don't know if a lot of people would be laughing by the end of this film. I recommend it to anybody that enjoys the offbeat.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Not familiar with this one. I did watch another Bateman directed film- Bad Words. Pretty good.

He really handles the direction here well. I also was impressed with his acting. He obviously has a really good twisted sense of humor, which I really dig. I will have to check out Bad Words, I have not seen that, but his sense of the subversive really appeals to me.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I just watched the trailer in the first post. I guess this was a film made for/by Starz so maybe this did not play in cinemas, I don't know. The trailer is not bad at telling you what the film will be like. It also shows off some of the really great writing in the film. I like the line where Walken says "You think we damaged you. That's what parents do, they damage their kids. So what."

I also like the line Bateman says in the trailer to his sister, "We can't fix them we can only fix ourselves."

Really, this is what the picture is about. What it is like to be in a family and what families do to each other and how we deal with it. They use a bizarre family to examine these things but I think those messages are universal.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Also just as an aside, again, the guy that plays the young Walken in this is great and shows you do not need to do CGI de-aging. I know I keep bringing that up but I never stop wondering how Scorsese got sold on the CGI de-aging process for The Irishman.