Normal
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Movie Reviews of Normal
Movie Review: Drama or farce?
Summary: 3 Stars
The acting of Tom Wilkinson as the transgender MTF was quite good, and the acting of Jessica Lange was superb. I wanted to like this movie a lot, but.... it just doesn't cut it (please excuse this poor attempt at humor). I have to disagree with the Amazon.com reviewer's opinion that the humor and the drama don't get into each other's way in this film. The makers of the film can't decide what the focus of the film is about, whether to play it for laughs or for pathos. Of course, in some fine dramas the humor and the pathos can both reinforce each other. But that doesn't happen here. And aside from Lange and Wilkinson (and their daughter), the acting is very wooden, so much so that the movie is occasionally unintentionally funny. Once I decided to watch the remainder of the movie as a farce, I laughed a bunch at the high point of the movie: where the daughter gives a speech in front of her class at school on what happens in a gender-reassigment-surgery. Her demonstration broke me up.
I think it will be quite a while before Hollywood makes a good movie on this subjuect. In the meantime, there are some very educational books on the subject of transsexualism, some of which have both pathos and humor. My favorite is "The Woman I Was Not Born to Be, A Transsexual Journey" by Aleshia Brevard.
Movie Review: A bit Awkward for everyone
Summary: 3 Stars
For a made for television low-budget movie, the actors wrung a lot of truth out of a story that may or may not have reflected the actual physical process of a man becoming a woman.
The reason the movie was made was because of the tabloid appeal of the main idea. The portrayals of middle American people was more accurate than most of us would like to imagine. They are frightened of anything new, programmed to hate at the drop of an epithet and betray the fact that our educational system is more about entrenched teacher cadres than about awakening any pursuit of truth and knowledge. I don't like to think that we are really that close to the "My Name is Earl" mentality, but I think that we are.
Movie Review: "Oh Roy, what we do for love..."
Summary: 3 Stars
Well, it had one of the best opening credits scenes I've ever seen- great stuff. Its a movie about this couple who have been happily married for 25 years and are still devoted and in love. And then the husband comes out and says hes a woman trapped in a man's body and wants a sex change. Its about how they deal with it. Its actually a really well done film... really good acting, well shot, well written, its a good one. Serious, and very adult- not adult like porn, just adult as in... yeah, you get it.
Movie Review: Cliché
Summary: 2 Stars
As expected from an HBO production, this TS coming out tale is loud and crude.
Essentially, Normal is She's Not There, with a rougher transition, all the better for a whopping big happy ending. The protagonist Roy (played by Tom Wilkinson), a church-going, size-20 tractor salesman, is the least compelling and convincing character. Or maybe it's just a weak premise - TS outta the blue. Either way, Irma, the conservative Donna Reed-type wife provides Jessica Lange an ultra-wattage screen turn. Nevertheless, the mildly butch teeniebopper daughter (ably played by Hayden Panettiere) steals the show. Terse, laconic, with grandstanding punctuations, Normal's biggest problem is its reliance on violence to communicate "passage": Husband grabs wife and forces a kiss on her to "communicate his love," Dad smacks son to "get through" to him and gain his respect. That's NOT a positive message! Meanwhile, Roy's macho boss wears a pink shirt - ooo, subtle. Finally, Roy "becomes a woman" by demonstrating abject (fem) submissiveness: she "changes" her vicious father's soiled pants without any hope of receiving kindness in return; like, presto.
Whattya expect from TeeVee?
Movie Review: Think you're confused?
Summary: 1 Stars
I picked up this movie mistakingly thinking it was another story about a MidWestern couple who had a story similar to this. The man, as it were, suffered a trama and discovered he had multiple personality disorder. This was, of course, not the same thing.
I just don't get this movie. I don't get how someone could be this self centered as to put their family through something like this. The guy waits until age 50 something to confess that he's really a woman trapped in a man's body, confesses it to their minister rather than his wife first, and then expects the world to accept him. Somehow I doubt a town full of guys named Billy Bob would understand, least of all anyone in or outside my family. The guy should've seen a shrink, but then again had he seen a shrink there wouldn't have been a movie to watch.