Upon wikipedia-ing Gigantic, starring Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel, I found that this movie got 1/2 stars out of 5 on some obscure movie rating site, which is quite sad seeing as I really liked it. It's basically about this guy who is obsessed with adopting a Chinese baby, and right around the time he is approved to adopt it, he meets and falls in love with this rich, but kind of fucked up on the inside, girl, who is ironically nicknamed Happy. And while that is going on there is a homeless man (played by the dude who played Alan in The Hangover) that constantly beats up Paul Dano for no apparant reason.
Anyway, pretty much every review gives this movie terrible ratings and very harshly worded criticisms, saying the characters weren't "believable" or "genuine", and the plot made no sense and came to no conclusion, which made me kind of annoyed. I tend to like "bad" movies, I guess. Ones that are more like glimpses into real people's lives than complete stories where everything has a meaning and nothing exists outside of it. To me it seems more "believable" that you don't know everything about a character's life than when Nicholas Cage is scraping the paint off a 50 year old elemetary school gymnasium door in Knowing (which, by the way, was a silly but creepy ass movie that I think you should see). It was refreshing to see a movie about painfully regular people that didn't make your life feel like shit compared to that of the leading man and lady, who just so happen to lead extraordinary lives with extraordinary events. I don't know about you, but I wake up every day and go to sleep every night and nothing spectacular ever happens to me. If they made a movie about my life, people would say it sucked. I exist, and I will continue existing long after the conclusion of my story.
It irks me that Paul Dano and Zooey Dechanel's characters were criticised for being un-genuine. Characters aren't always so animated, their intense passionate chemistry isn't always shown in their eyes and through their complex hand motions, or whatever it is that makes an actor so critically acclaimed and Oscar-worthy these days, I don't know. No, people are just dry, boring, creatures who talk however they talk and love in their own average, normal ways.
It's kind of funny that this movie was criticised for being unrealistic when it is probably the closest thing resembling real life, complete with random little details and lack of a happy ending. It makes me think about what people think their lives are supposed to be like.
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