Opposition In All Things

This week I had a media encounter with the film Momma's Boy. At first I was a little reluctant to watch it because I didn't like Napoleon Dynamite all that much. Unfortunately, my first impressions of the film were right. Honestly, I didn't like it. There wasn't much character development and the dialogue seemed way to scripted. I understand what they were trying to accomplish and how they wanted to portray the characters but it was so over the top that it came across as terribly dry.

The movie is about a kid (well, he's 28) who lives with his mom because he feels it is his mission to take care of her since his dad died when he was a small boy. He drops out of college because he is homesick and he spends every weekend playing games with his mom and planning dinners for two. He seems to be dating his own mother to protect her from getting her heart broken. What he doesn't realize is that he is breaking her heart by not letting go.

I tried to analyze this film and found myself hitting some roadblocks. What I mainly kept asking myself was why I didn't like the film. I commented to my husband that it was a dumb movie and I realized it was because everything seemed so fake. I haven't ever seen people talk or interact that way in real life. I think audiences can suspend believability to a certain extent. Dialogue is definitely an element that is hard to fudge. I think I didn't like this film because the dialogue was too un-real. John Heder's character stumbled over words and not just simple words, large vocabulary words. If he was going to use big literary terms he needed to be able to speak clearly. I'm noticing that audiences are less forgiving when it comes to anything sound related. I definitely think the dialogue was a huge contibutor to this negative experience.

I think everyone can learn from bad examples. In a classroom students could be asked about movies or media they didn't like. As a list is compiled, have the students explain and engage in discussion about why they didn't like it. Looking at this media from a different perspective can definitely be benificial. As the students engage in discussion the teacher could ask the students what they think the author of the text was trying to accomplish and how they could have accomplished it better. This kind of discussion can get creative juices flowing and encourage openmindedness.