Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Yes, it's a Hollywood film with all the clever coincidences and neat n' tidy endings, but it is also very clever, well acted, and even poetic. Go see a film that doesn't involve flying superheroes, gun fights, or animated toys...you'll be glad you did.

She must create so she doesn't become a menace to society. A beautiful insight into the mind of an artist who bottled up her creative drive, and became dysfunctional.

Started out at little slow and ended strong. The Director took to long to help us understand the complexity of Bernadette and her real struggles -which we can all identify with, so that we really liked and rooted for her. Once the movie got there it took off and ended strong. One criticism overall and not so much about this movie but an overall statement. If a movie is set in a specific city - film it in that city. There were obvious obligatory scenes of Seattle but It was clearly filmed mostly elsewhere.

Bernadette is the kind of woman you would cross the road to avoid and who would also cross the road to avoid meeting you and she's just the perfect character for Cate Blanchett to add to her portfolio of oddballs. She's also married to something of an oddball, (Billy Crudup), who's some kind of computer genius and between them they have managed to create a nice, normal teenage daughter, (newcomer Emma Nelson, superb), and they all live in a Seattle mansion that is literally falling apart. But Bernadette isn't just a sociopathic oddball; she is, or was, a great architect who dropped out and whose midlife crisis has lasted a couple of decades.

"Where'd you go, Bernadette" is a Richard Linklater comedy so you know we are in odddball territory to begin with. What you might not realise is that it's also very funny and naturally more than a little sad. It's like a walking, talking New Yorker cartoon brought to glorious life and not just by Blanchett, (no-one does crazy quite like her), Crudup and Nelson but by a terrific supporting cast headed by Kristen Wiig and with pitch-perfect turns from Judy Greer, Zoe Chao, Laurence Fishburne, David Paymer and Steve Zahn. I loved every crazy, off-the-wall and marvellously moving moment.

My wife and I went to see this movie because Kristen Wiig is in it and it looked like it would be funny. It is funny - but it is a lot more. It is quirky (we love quirky movies!), edgy, sometimes uncomfortable, but mostly enlightening (as in bringing light in). It could have been titled "Where'd you go Human Spirit?", or "Where'd you go Imagination?, or "This is what happens to society when fear drives honest, loving, intelligent people to start acting weird and give up on each other". And it shows us the answer in a very positive way. So, it was not Bridesmaids. Closer to "Welcome to Me" or "Skeleton Twins" maybe (I loved both), but not really like any other movie I can think of. Note: The critics seemed to not like it. That is almost a sure sign of a good movie to me. Bless their pointy little heads.