Review: Beginners

Review: Beginners

Rating: ***

Nonna's Rating: $$$

Rotten Tomatoes: 82%

Audience: 81%

Take two charming actors, Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor, mix in Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) and a photogenic Jack Russell Terrier, and you have, by definition, a better than average movie. McGregor plays Oliver, a a very sad 38 year old man whose father has recently passed away.

Through flashbacks, we come to know Oliver's story. His mother and father were married for 44 years. His mother has died five years before; at that time, his father (Plummer as Hal) came out of the closet after years of being surreptitiously gay. This new-found honesty has become the basis for strengthening the relationship of father and son. Hal, however, has died of lung cancer a few months before Oliver meets Anne (Melanie Laurent). The movie's portrayal of the sadness that can pervade a life after the death of a parent is sometimes painfully realistic, but not cloyingly so.

The film focuses on how Oliver and Anne learn to love one another; how each becomes an adult capable of commitment. The film's not perfect. The subtitles for the dog's thoughts are a bit much, but all in all the actors o a fine job of convincing us they care deeply about one another.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price

$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it