HOME VIEWING REVIEW:

THE KID DETECTIVE ★★★

Abe Applebaum (Adam Brody, "Ready or Not") was once the local celebrity for solving all kinds of crimes for his neighbors. Now he's all grown up, and business is not exactly thriving. Still taking small-time cases involving missing cats and the like, Abe is viewed as the town disappointment. Drinking and sleeping in, wallowing in past glories, he has never confronted the realities of his life. Particularly the one case of his school friend Gracie, missing since the age of 12 and her case never resolved.

One day a young teen girl named Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) asks him to help her investigate the murder of her boyfriend. Though he has never had a case of this level, he wants to redeem himself as the town's genius kid detective. Along the way he learns a few lessons about himself and his perceptions about the past.

All of this could have been played strictly for laughs. Indeed there are a few nods in that direction, as we witness Abe climbing through windows and hiding in closets just as a kid sleuth might. What surprised me was that the movie posits the question of what would happen to a boy whose life centered on being showered with accolades at a young age, even being given the keys to the town by the Mayor. In doing so, the movies takes some interesting turns. Particularly as he interacts with the people in his town, as the girl who hires him makes some observations of her own that lead him to question his worth as a detective. 

Adam Brody infuses this character with a sense of desperation mixed with determination. He was a local star at 12 but is now a joke at 32, and doesn't really understand how that happened. His quest to redeem himself becomes poignant, as well as funny at times. This is a good little movie that goes in a direction you might not be expecting.


CLASSIC HOME VIEWING REVIEW:  

A FAMILY UPSIDE DOWN ★★★½

Academy Award winner Helen Hayes ("Airport," 1970) and Academy Award nominee Fred Astaire ("The Towering Inferno," 1974) play an elderly couple named Emma and Ted Long, whose cheerful existence is thrown out of balance when one suffers a heart attack. Suddenly their very ability to live out their days independently becomes a problem. The concerned adult children Mike (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) and Wendy (Patty Duke Astin) play out the family dynamic about how much they can do financially and emotionally for their ailing parents. Simple freedoms like driving a car or painting the house walls are suddenly forbidden activities. Despite the love and concern of their children, the couple becomes increasingly frustrated by these circumstances and begin to seem resigned to an inevitable fate. Is it too late for them to find happiness again?

This poignant television drama centers on what it means to grow old. While the effects of aging has been explored before ("Make Way for Tomorrow," 1937) and since ("The Father," 2020) in various forms, "A Family Upside Down" nevertheless elicits the empathy of the audience due mainly to a solid cast and a straightforward script. All four main actors were nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award, with Astaire taking home the prize for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama or Comedy Special. It was a rare dramatic role for the veteran screen star best known for tap dancing his way through classic musicals.

 REVIEW:  

CODA ★★★½ ★★★★

Aug 15, 2021

Bryan Macklowe’s review published on Letterboxd:

Ruby (Emilia Jones, Netflix's "Lock & Key") is a high school teenager who happens to be a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her family is a hard-working unit which operates within the local fish industry. She is the family's only link to the hearing world, placing a lot of responsibility onto her young shoulders. One day, Ruby decides to take a chance on signing up for the school choir. She loves to sing along to the radio on fishing shifts, so why not? 

While at first shy about singing in front of her classmates, her teacher encourages Ruby to develop her talent. Before long she is invited to take lessons with her music teacher, Mr. Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez, "How to Be a Latin Lover"), in order to study for a prestigious college audition. This creates a clash between her desire to sing and her family's reliance on her. Making matters even more complicated is that her loving but rather isolated parents (Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin, "Children of a Lesser God," and Troy Kotsur, "Wild Prairie Rose") don't really understand or, at first, want to understand, her interest in singing. They see the hearing world as filled with enemies and bullies, and would rather have Ruby stay with them selling fish. How she balances these conflicting issues is at the core of the film, in addition to navigating her own social life and developing a relationship with a fellow musician student (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, so good as the lead in "Sing Street" a few years ago).

Some of these elements reminded me a bit of the now-classic coming-of-age movie "Billy Elliot," in which an aspiring young dancer must confront his coal-mining family about his desire for a different life. "CODA," despite familiar themes of the genre, differentiates itself through this fresh perspective of a family struggling to communicate in a world that seems separated from their own lives. 

The performances are uniformly good here, with particular attention to Emilia Jones, who brings a grounded appeal to Ruby that immediately creates sympathy for her situation. Matlin and Kotsur are excellent as the parents who must slowly come to a recognition that their experience might be clouding their view of their expectations for their daughter. Also strong is Daniel Durant ("Silent Notes") as Ruby's strong-headed older brother Leo, who is also deaf and wants the family to stand up to the people who take financial advantage of them at the fishing docks.

"CODA" transcends its genre origins as a coming-of-age story to tell an engaging story about family and following your passions in a way that isn't cloying or sappy.