Joyce Liu – Google

A lot to process, but overall, I can say with 100% certainty that I came out of viewing this with the thought that the director is STILL bullying his poor classmate after half a century. First off, as he explained in the film, this isn't even the first film he's created exploring his horrific "relationship" with his classmate Dick. He spent the entire film attempting to gain sympathy and manipulate the viewers that while he orchestrated a brutal beating of this classmate, it was because he was coping with the death of his brother. People go through trauma every day, that does not mean you can justify these violent acts. The best part, he doesn't even apologize once to his classmate and spent the majority of the film justifying the bullying by interviewing old classmates on how "weird" and "alone" Dick was. Kids are mean, but to continue to bully this man and profit off of his trauma without his consent is beyond. I wish I could even get to the bizarre stylistic choices, but I'm so disturbed by the narcissism of the filmmaker. Hats off to his teacher saying no one wants to watch this. I wish I didn't contribute to the views. I don't even know how this came up for Oscar consideration with so many amazing documentaries that uplift. The only "Dick" in this film is the filmmaker.

The first chapter was interesting but there was nothing redeeming about the rest of the novel. I understand that with fiction, sometimes you have to suspend disbelief, but there's a limit of how far that goes. Somehow the author is able to go into great detail about irrelevant items like costs per plate in wedding planning, but can't remember the subplots or characters she's created. Why would they even be mentioned if they're not relevant - and it's not even critical to the twist ending. Moreover, beyond the insufferable characters (I commend her on writing a book where I dislike every single character), the writing style is not pleasant to read. TL;DR interesting premise but awful execution