The Squid and the Whale

< Previous Trailer  |   Add to My Scrapbook  |   Next Trailer >
The Squid and the Whale

77% Liked It
liked it

The Squid and the Whale

Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Halley Feiffer, Anna Paquin

Bernard Berkman, the patriarch of an eccentric Brooklyn family, claims to have been a famous novelist but is now reduced to teaching. His wife Joan discovers a literary talent of her own, and it break...( read more  read more... )s up the family, leaving the two teenage sons, Walt, 16, and Frank, 12, divided between their parents. The wife starts an affair with her younger son's tennis coach, while the husband starts sleeping with a student whom his elder son is courting.

Id: 10892537

Do you want to see this movie?

My Friends Said...

The Squid and the Whale Recent Reviews

Register or sign-in to see your friends' reviews !

Recent Reviews

The Squid and the Whale Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    September 29, 2009
    SirPant
    I hate the expression 'Coming of Age' but I guess this is what this film is but it?s not just 'Coming of age' for the young characters, everyone has growing up to do in this very sweet and honest film!
  • markymarkslunggnome
    June 28, 2009
    markymarkslunggnome
    Well done movie. awkward. Had hard time enjoying it fully but I suppose it's cause I used to smear semen all over the place myself when I was younger
  • JeT0425
    June 13, 2009
    JeT0425
    One of the best movies of 2005. Very underrated and not known by most people. Should have won the Original Screenplay award at the Oscars, too. Noah Baumbach created an amazing film, here. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney should also have been nominated for Oscars. This movie just b...( read more)lows me away... it's just amazing!
  • evillincoln
    June 5, 2009
    evillincoln
    so uncomfortable
  • kiriyamakazou
    April 10, 2009
    kiriyamakazou
    The Squid and the Whale examines the affects on two young boys after their parents decide to separate. It's a funny, honest and moving film but one that soends too much time echoing it's point. I enjoyed the ways the boys began to echo their parents but a lot of the time it felt ...( read more)very forced and avoided subtlety. The film has a large number of excellent moments, but can't decide how to wrap them all together for a worthy ending. An obviously great performance by Linney and the two youngbmake this worth all 80 minutes.
  • magnolia12883
    November 20, 2009
    magnolia12883
    Noah Baumbach's bitter, dry, sardonically witty dramedy is a remarkably observant portrait of a family on the brink of self-implosion. In Brooklyn in 1986, Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels), once a somewhat successful published author now teaching literary classes to college student...( read more)s, is becoming attracted to his racy protege (Anna Paquin). Meanwhile, his wife Joan (Laura Linney), who has had multiple sexual affairs ("nothing serious"), is carrying on with the family tennis pro (William Baldwin) and attempting to become a published author herself. These two pseudo-intellectuals' marriage is on a collision course with an apocalypse of their own creation; so where does that leave their two children? They respond in different ways. The youngest is Frank (Owen Kline, son of Kevin) who is unprepared for the revelation that his parents' marriage has fallen apart and that he will be going back and forth between them "for a while;" he tends to favor his mother, and soon is swearing up a storm, drinking beer, and masturbating and spreading his semen all over school. Meanwhile, the oldest son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg of "Roger Dodger"), is a high school student and would-be intellectual monster in the making, skewing toward his father's side of things: he asks his opinion about class-assigned books to decide whether or not to "waste his time" on them (turns out "A Tale of Two Cities" is "minor Dickens"); he tries to impress his sweet potential first girlfriend Sophie (Halley Feiffer) by regurgitating his dad's opinions on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and when it turns out she's actually read it, he responds: "It's very Kafkaesque," to which she quickly fires back, "Well...it's by Franz Kafka. It has to be;" he lets his father dictate that he, Walt and Sophie should skip "Short Circuit" and see something else ("I hear 'Blue Velvet' is supposed to be quite interesting"); and even claims he wrote "Hey You" by Pink Floyd - only to be caught after winning the school talent competition. The film was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the maker of "Kicking & Screaming" (1995; not the Will Farrell kids soccer one), a tale of literary college graduates who become slackers, and the co-writer of Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004). In the locations, art direction, cinematography, right down to the choice of music, Baumbach shows a sure hand at evoking a specific time, place and style of people while also paying astonishingly minute attention to the details of what divorce does to children and their parents; as a child of divorce, I could completely empathize and understand. The story, it may not shock you to discover then, is heavily autobiographical; Baumbach came from writing stock - his father was novelist Jonathan Baumbach and his mother was film critic Georgia Brown. The performances too are dead-on in their portrayal of the anger, sadness and confusion that must go on when a child is almost forced to favor one parent over another, yet must be ferried back and forth between them. This is a tough, honest, bitter and bruisingly funny look at a powder keg of a situation, and its explosion is often funny, insightful and memorable. One of the year's best films.



    NOTE: At the Toronto Film Festival, the film premiered with an 88 minute running time, but was seemingly cut for theatrical and DVD release. The film was (deservedly) a 2005 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay. Baumbach, meanwhile, has since gone on to write and direct "Margot at the Wedding" (2007) with Nicole Kidman as a similarly cold would-be intellectual writer.
  • ythelastman89
    November 16, 2009
    ythelastman89
    What I think I love about this so much, is that the characters are so ruthless and dead on. Finally a movie where people aren't so nice all the time. Not one character is perfect, they're all screwed up in their own way. It makes it easier to like a character when they aren't bui...( read more)lt up to be this perfect incarnation of a human being. Everyone acts based on their own wants/needs in this movie, not the most honorable or likable actions.
  • dusthansen
    November 9, 2009
    dusthansen
    A little bit up its own ass (Wes Anderson style) but the movie is actually about a guy who is completely up his own ass so it's great that way. Cast is awesome. William Baldwin.
  • mmfz
    November 8, 2009
    mmfz
    a very honest movie O.o i'm impressed. It felt like a confession.
  • ZlatkoGR
    November 7, 2009
    ZlatkoGR
    A family dramedy that never quite hit the spot but has a very nice cast (Jeff Daniels never stops to amaze me) and did not overstate its meaning and purpose. Also, it is interesting that the parents were behaving like kids and the opposite. All in all, a well drawn movie with a f...( read more)inely written script.
View All Reviews

Opening This Week

Top Box Office

Upcoming Movies

New on DVD