Nancy Lake

I enjoyed this colorful family very much. The family .although gifted. has some dysfunction going on. They have shut out Bruno who is the uncle of Mirabel. There must be a unifying principal missing and Mirabel will be the one to create harmony among all the exceptional members of this family. The music is great too.

This is one of my favorite movies. It is irreverent on every level. I laughed at everything. There are some subtle life lessons. Jack when playing Jill with Al shows what strong boundaries are like. Jill wins a guy in the end by being herself. What she does is have fun and she is very athletic and strong. I always suspected my older brother did not really like me but I knew that he deep down does love me. I found this movie funny and therapeutic and I think it won several awards.

This movie has the most talented stars. It must be the writing and the director. It was just awful. It is awkward and not graceful. Robert Denaro gets punched in the face too many times. Even the most dysfunctional of families could not have been this unbalanced and it was not funny. I think they are all too emotionally charged. I wish someone could explain why this ensemble of a group did not work well together.

I got sick watching it. There was so much violence in every scene. I enjoyed some of the characters like Pongo, and the Mother. Every family seems to have its dysfunction and character types like the drug addict, the gay or trans-gendered person, the family hero, the forgotten child, etc. It was interesting as I watched the dynamics. Why is it that the people who say they love us hurt us so much? Home should be a safe place. Anyway, it seems the writers could have taken away almost all the blood and violence and our exposure to it and had an amazing story to tell. In a way we are all sitting on hidden gifts and talents. Why do those gifts have to be focused on lethal gifts? If kids are going to save the world, it would have to be a collection of our very best attributes. If a man lives by his sword he will die by his sword, says the Bible verse. That is why Jesus did not raise an army to defeat the Romans. There is an element of overcoming and evolution that must happen to enter a beautiful and sustaining peace. That will not be boring either. There is so much creative adventure ahead. But not if we settle for the dystopic same old dystopic story lines and tired epic adventures with lots of blood and guts. Please do something else.

I could not find a song track for this film. I loved the way the kids sang Leonard Cohen's song: Anthem. Ring the Bells that still can ring. That might be the most important offering in the movie. I do believe that Angels dwell among us and are with us in times of need. They might be equally there in times of joy, I believe that. It rings true for me. The actors are fabulous but they needed better scripts and more poignant moments. I still applaud the film for a brave attempt to say things that are a whisper and a silent knowing. I don't think that the Universe needs to enlist a person to receive all that mail and then send the answers off as birds. I believe that Gwen is a symbolic reference for angelic intervention. The answers are more energetic, easy, and like mercury. And in the end, death is a gift of freedom. Embrace the true purpose of one's life and create a meaningful joyous life. Don't sit around waiting for something to happen. Perhaps that is just the feelings I derive from the movie. I do wonder what the screen writers were trying for, but, it was a valiant effort.