I begrudgingly attended the preview showing for the new Rob Reiner film Flipped (opening Friday, August 27, 2010), thoroughly expecting to roll my eyes for 90 minutes of saccharine, prepubescent puppy love.
Was I pleasantly surprised! This film drew me in and won me over by reawakening memories and emotions long dormant or at least dulled by the sensory overload of modern living.
The story harkens back to the late 1950s, when life was certainly simpler yet paradoxically deeper. By contrast, life these days seems way more complicated yet oddly superficial.
"Back in the day" people communicated by actually talking face to face with one another, or else showed disapproval by refusing to talk at all. This was long before the Internet, email and yes, even this most magnificent iPad, reduced our social interaction to a series of LOLs and :)s, if not WTFs.
Against this backdrop of life before cell phones, familiar (albeit all too rare nowadays) human feelings bubble to the surface: shyness, infatuation, hurt, courage, honesty and integrity shine out without the aid of mind-numbing FX and CGI.
When was the last time you saw a movie that both entertained you and made you think? No 3D, no IMAX, no gratuitous nudity, no vulgarities, no sex scenes, no drugs, no violence---just superb acting bringing a well-written and delightful script to life. If there is any downside to the movie, it's in the realization that over the past 50 years we somehow have lost the centrality of family. People still face the very same situations raised in the movie, only now our problems are compounded by isolation and self-imposed exile from one another.
Not coincidentally, I'm sure, the mothers in the two families are the catalysts for change. A family meal and a basket lunch provide pivotal moments for the characters to break through barriers and break down walls.
Coming against Sty Stalone's blockbuster The Expendables (which I also enjoyed, btw, for its adventure genre: mindless mayhem) with nonstop explosions, chase scenes and bloody violence, the low-key Flipped will not rake in the big bucks, but by contrast it will leave the audience rather than the filmmaker enriched.
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