| I've been a Jeff Daniels fan for a long time.This is yet | | | | family unit where the little Frank starts drinking beer |
| another great Jeff Daniels movie based on a very | | | | when he is home alone and displays sex-related |
| strong script by Noah Baumbach who also directed | | | | anomalies at school and home. Walt, on the other |
| this family drama. Bernie Berkman (Daniels) is an | | | | hand, takes a different route to his neurosis and tries |
| English professor married to another writer Joan | | | | plagiarism to score a quick success at his high school's |
| (delivered with great texture by Laura Linney). They | | | | talent contest.Bernie himself loses his rudder as well |
| have two sons Walt (Chicken) (Jesse Eisenberg) and | | | | and vacillates between his desire to keep away from |
| Frank (Pinkie) Berkman (Owen Kline) who go through | | | | Joan, on the one hand, and his jealousy with her literary |
| their own breakdown episodes when they hear that | | | | success and boyfriends on the other. He also starts an |
| their mom and dad are separating.The opening tennis | | | | affair with a female student of his who rents a room |
| scene in which the four are playing a nasty game of | | | | at his new house and flirts with his son as well.There is |
| doubles (Bernie keeps hitting Joan with stiff volleys) is | | | | no quick and neat solution to this modern drama set in |
| a good metaphor for where their relationship is | | | | Brooklyn in the 80s. There is an attempt at |
| headed. On the one side is Bernie and Walt, and on | | | | reconciliation but no one knows how to get the |
| the other, Joan and Frank.Nobody seems to be | | | | toothpaste back into the tube again. Thus it is very |
| blameless but Joan probably contributed more to the | | | | appropriate that the film ends with Walt's visit to the |
| breakup than anybody else with her illicit love affair | | | | museum of natural history where there is an immense |
| with a neighbor. During their separation she beds her | | | | replica of a whale battling with a giant squid (and thus |
| son's tennis coach (a perfectly cast happy-go-lucky Bill | | | | the film's title). |
| Baldwin). Soon we have a seriously malfunctioning | | | | |