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FeedMovie Review: Flipped
Films opening this week:
Farewell - Eastern Hills Dipson
Flipped - Transit, Quaker Regals
Resident Evil: Afterlife - Maple Ridge; Market Arcade; Transit, Elmwood, Galleria, Hollywood, Quaker Regals; Flix; Transit Drive-In
Just before a recent screening of Rob Reiner’s new film Flipped, I discovered that it was based on an award-winning young adult novel by celebrated author Wendelin Van Draanen. The title has double meaning: the idea of "flipping" over someone and a literal format of alternating between the viewpoints of the two complicated characters at the film's center: Juli Baker and Bryce Loski. Reiner, never subtle, transitions each segment with a top to bottom flip of the frame, showing how the same events are seen differently from the perspective of each actor. When a new family moves into the house across the street, seven-year-old Juli is instantly smitten with the new boy in town. He may be trying his hardest to get away from her, but she thinks he’s playing coy and shy. It’s not until six years pass that the love/hate relationship reaches fruition, with both kids learning about life and love.
Well-known for a childhood favorite of mine, The Princess Bride, Reiner is trying to get back to telling well-written stories for the masses. Bride and Stand By Me were both adapted screenplays chock-full of heart, laughter, and truth. Thanks to Flipped's use of voiceover narration from the young leads, we as an audience aren’t simply looking in on this slice of life; we are experiencing it with both Juli (Madeline Carroll) and Bryce (Callan McAuliffe). There is a lot of introspection and second-guessing on display. The twelve-year-old Juli finds her infatuation and does her best to make it known, while Bryce endures "cooties" era chiding by those macho peers. The more she pushes, the more he pulls away … and vice versa. But what makes this story transcend that simple romance dynamic are the details laid bare, including the inevitable familial troubles that increase with the years.
Maybe the story is also a thinly veiled expression of gender evolution and the male sex’s ever-lagging progress. A 13-year old girl finds maturity in the trials and tribulations of life, while a 13-year old boy discovers it’s okay to have feelings for a girl his friends deem unworthy. She had that figured out long before, so his long-awaited 180 is no longer the most important thing in her life.
Its setting of 1960s suburbia makes the story relevant across generations. The over-middle age audience members around me were reminiscing about a simpler time from experience—considering their reaction when a high school girl invites two older boys up to see her room and no one bats an eye.
Flipped may start out as an idyllic look into two families growing across from each other, but soon, other, less charming issues emerge. From the angrily regretful father taking his self-loathing out on his family (Anthony Edwards is actually pretty great, somewhat against usual type) to the compassionate bricklayer always putting family before himself (Aidan Quinn is a definite standout) to the mothers caught in the middle (a welcome return to the big screen for both Rebecca De Mornay and Penelope Ann Miller), we watch the story become more than puppy love.
The inclusion of John Mahoney’s sage grandfather Chet plays a huge role in opening the kids’ eyes to the stark reality at hand, lending an example to look to for guidance and support. But it is Carroll and McAuliffe who have to do the heavy lifting in projecting a constant metamorphosis of feeling from hatred to love to depression to joy to fear to sorrow and beyond. It is a pathway filled with way more mistakes than they hoped for, but that’s life. Their evolution amidst the fine acting surrounding them becomes more than enough reason to watch this film.
Flipped 7/10
photography:
[1] (L-R) CALLAN McAULIFFE as Bryce Loski and MADELINE CARROLL as Juli Baker in Castle Rock Entertainment's coming-of-age romantic comedy "FLIPPED," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ben Glass
[2] (L-R) MADELINE CARROLL as Juli Baker and JOHN MAHONEY as Chet Duncan in Castle Rock Entertainment's coming-of-age romantic comedy "FLIPPED," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
