Director: Roman Polanski
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 1.5
Two bourgeois families (Jodie Foster with John C. Reilly and Kate Winslet with Christoph Waltz) meet up to try to iron out how to handle a schoolyard incident involving their sons, in which the one boy knocked out the other boy's teeth with a stick. I missed the opportunity to see this on stage in NY, but I suppose now I didn't miss much: it's basically four bickering, relatively well-to-do ninnies at first trying to be civilized before succumbing to the evil fruits of scotch and cobbler and becoming childish themselves: Winslet's character pukes, Waltz's character is as tied to his cell phone as a teenage girl and Foster frets over her art books being defiled by Winslet's stomach acids. Playwright Yasmina Reza's weak-wristed slap at the thinly-disguised immaturity of adults is only worth a shrug and a sigh, and the notion that the kids' taking out their aggression with each other via violence is a quicker and more genuine 'solution' to their problem - as opposed to 'talking it out' - seems shallow. Echoes Buñuel, except not nearly as lacerating or intelligent.
