rwtmoore
This movie demonstrates everything that's wrong with Hollywood.The overall story isn't that bad; it's the execution. This movie is filled to the brim with myriad plot holes, implausible situations and dialog, lame humor and laughable attempts at poignancy. And if that's not bad enough, it's also crammed with clichéd sound effects, unrelated trendy music and an array of un-called-for camera tricks and 'cool' editing. There's so much absurd stuff here, it would take me hundreds of pages to explain it all. Almost every aspect of this film is so implausible, that right from the start I could not suspend my disbelief.It's as if the filmmakers decided to use every cool camera movement and editing that they ever saw and shoehorn it into this movie. That, coupled with the bad music choices, make the tone of this thing jump all over the place. It's disjointed and lacks a unified feel.Why are the characters introduced with typing across the screen? This is a pathetic cliché that goes back to espionage type movies, so why is it here? Who's documenting the case? This movie doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries desperately to be Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino all rolled into one and it just doesn't work. Barkley narrates at the beginning and end of this movie. If it is supposed to be seen through Barkley's eyes, then we've been cheaply duped, because a ton of stuff has been left out that would have been shown to the audience. You can't have a character narrate and then hide what he sees and hears from the audience. It's a cheap trick.The tip of the iceberg of plot holes and implausibilities: What is the purpose of the gardener character? He could be removed and the story wouldn't change one bit. And why was he murdered? It seems absurd that they'd kill him just to vacate the apartment. These are supposed to be brilliant people; wasn't there a less illegal, less violent way to accomplish that? And what's with linking OCD with electric cars? The filmmakers often try to make a correlation between things that don't correlate. The Pat Benitar thing was a sad attempt at making a poignant link between the brothers. And how convenient was it that he left City Hall's apartment without his shoes. No one I know has ever been in that much of a hurry. He couldn't just carry them along with his shirt? Like so much of this script it's unbelievably contrived.If there's been four thumbs taken in the last month wouldn't it be on the news? Wouldn't everybody know about it? And, if so, why is it crucial to send a thumb, to show you mean business, when everyone knows it's probably not the kidnap victim's thumb. And how did they get the Mini-Cooper in the apartment? Where did the brothers meet and plan it all? How did they know about each other? And Eli's dialog about molecules luminescing is over-the-top sophomoric.Thaddeus spends a significant amount of time telling us how much of a horrible person his father is. Then, instantly, he wants his father to be proud of him and he wants to follow in his footsteps. What? He wants to steal other people's work and mess around with grad students and other people's wives? And Barkley seems like a dork even after we're shown that he's some kind of evil genius. I know a heck of a lot of Phds and not one of them ever played a Gameboy. And his mother is proud that he's an evil genius, because I guess, she's kind of evil too, even though she appears to have lived a successful and upstanding life for the past 50-odd years. Another cheap trick. OK, we get that people aren't all bad or all good. What a revelation. I think I got it when I was ten years old. And just in case we didn't get the message, Barkley actually tells us that during the opening credits.Fortunately, City Hall lit one hundred candles near her bed on the roof, just in case, she brings home Barkley, virtually a stranger, many hours later. And wouldn't it be funny if Barkley woke up in the morning and stretched, but forgot that he was naked and outdoors in bright sunlight and somebody saw him. Hilarious. If I was twelve years old again. Who's ever heard of moo-shu? I've been eating moo-shi for longer than Barkley's been alive.And we're spoon-fed embarrassing amounts of exposition: Thaddeus chronicling the gardener's history, Eli's history, etc. And just in case we missed the fact that City hall has done something twisted, don't worry, because right after she does it, a song is played that tells us that she's a twisted girl. And Barkley tells his whole personal situation to a clerk at a café. It's ridiculous. I've never seen such bad exposition. It's just lazy writing it really insults the intelligence of the viewer.There's the poetry reading place, where predictably, everyone's poetry is ludicrous, except, of course, City Hall's. I mean, this gag's got whiskers on it.And what's with the twisted logic of Sarah, "I hope it's Barkley's thumb. If it's somebody else's thumb then the kidnapper is a calculating psychopath." So, by that logic, if the kidnapper cuts off Barkley's thumb, then he's a psychopath, just not a calculating one. OK, I'll be on planet earth if anybody needs me.You can't tell what's going happen because you're not given enough information. They've stacked the deck where you can't possibly figure it out and by the end there's so many ridiculous and implausible situations that you don't care. A mystery must include all the info needed to get it. Otherwise, it's cheap trick, which is what this is.
Roland E. Zwick
Grad student Barkley Michaelson (Bryan Greenberg) is getting his PhD in cannibalism - not for actually eating his fellow man, mind you, but for studying those who do. This choice of topic doesn't sit very well with his dad, a hateful, arrogant college professor who's just been awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry and who wants his son to carry on his legacy after he's gone. Unfortunately, as Professor Eli Michaelson is over in Stockholm receiving his award, Barkley is back home in Pasadena being held for ransom by a crazed kidnapper. This is the setup for "Nobel Son," an Oedipal drama done in the form of a smart-alecky, wisecracking pitch dark comedy. Acting stalwarts Mary Steenburgen, Shawn Hatosy, Bill Pullman, Danny DeVito and Ted Danson round out the cast.If there's one thing a filmmaker can't fake, it's "coolness" - yet that's the one thing writer/director Randall Miller keeps working so hard to achieve in "Nobel Son," a movie that too often comes across as a poor-man's version of Quentin Tarentino. Yet, despite that derivativeness, the movie's frenetic style - a mixture of razzle-dazzle camera and editing techniques, snarky black humor, and a pounding rock soundtrack - reveals that Miller has some real potential as a filmmaker. And a series of nifty plot twists in the final third go a long way towards mitigating any misgivings we may have harbored about the movie earlier on.
brent cole
This really was a hard film to watch. And considering many of these known actors are usually quite good I have to assume that the Director wanted to take a fine group of actors and make them look and act as bad as possible. Or this was made with a lot of favors and now lost friendships. The lighting was horrific. Either that or the cast has aged twenty years recently. Mary, Bill; everyone except Danny looked like they had become old soft and wrinkled over night. The dialogue........who on earth wrote the dialogue. Yeah this in one of those films where you see a cast of mismatched actors who have aged and no one wants to hire them. So they take a film, any film and grab the pay check. EXCEPT that this particular group of actors are NOT that. These are all good actors, these are wonderful actors. And when I see wonderful actors who work in a show like this I have to guess a favor is at hand.
Chrysanthepop
Miller's 'Nobel Son' is one messy flick. Sure there are twists one after the other but hardly any layers and each twist gives birth to a plothole like why would Sarah, who is a working forensic psychologist, be broke? The characters are also poorly written. It doesn't take them a minute to change from smart to stupid or vice versa. The execution is very ordinary. There is enough violence (if you like watching that kind of stuff) and a lot happening to not bore one to sleep but it did not have much for me to like. Among the unusual cast, Alan Rickman stands out. He plays the part of an a-hole Nobel laureate very naturally. Mary Steenburgen is equally convincing. The rest of the cast don't make that much of an impression. Simply put, 'Nobel Son' does not have much to offer.
