Movie Reaction: The Glass Castle

Formula: (The Pursuit of Happyness / Big Fish) * (Sweet Home Alabama * Captain Fantastic)

For some reason, I'm having the hardest time starting this reaction. I'm not sure why either. The Glass Castle is a pretty straightforward movie. It's based on Jeanette Walls' memoir of the same title. It covers the first 30 or so years of her life. As a child, her family lived in poverty. He father could never hold a job for long and had them frequently moving before finally settling in West Virginia. As an adult, Jeanette has greatly improved her condition. She's a successful author living in New York with a wealthy finance. She then comes back into contact with her parents who are squatting in an abandoned building in the city. The movie shifts between her as an adult in the late 80's and flashbacks to her childhood.

The film is really about her father, Rex Walls. The man is a fascinating mess. He's a man whose personality fills every room he's in. He has a lot of romantic notions about how life should be. He's a survivor who teaches his kids that nothing in life is free and that you have to fight for something if you really want it. He's imaginative and often profound. Sadly, he is also a drunk and can't hold a job. He's emotionally abusive and can't follow through on anything. Most of the film is spent with Jeanette trying to find the right balance between loving and hating him.

Woody Harrelson plays Rex, and this is as good a time as any to point out that Woody Harrelson is a national treasure. Has he every been bad in a movie? I can't think of any examples*. He's been in bad movies for sure, but has he ever been bad? So, no surprise, he's excellent in this. He is able to play both sides of Rex in a way that can believably exist inside the same man. As much as I love the rest of the cast, his is the stand-out performance. Brie Larson plays Jeannette. I love Brie Larson and she does a great job. Jeannette just isn't as interesting. The same goes for Naomi Watts, who plays Jeannette's artist mother. She has some quirks, but Rex sucks up all the air whenever she's around. There's just no chance for her to stand out. Watts hold her own with Harrelson though, which has to count for something. Also, props to Ella Anderson who plays young Jeannette for a good portion of the movie. She's similarly dominated by Harrelson, but does well for a preteen.

*Here's my pitch: There needs to be a movie starring Woody Harrelson, Michael Pena, and Jon Goodman. Call it "The MVPs". No matter what it's about, I'll see it, because those three will make it watchable.

Overall, the movie is fine. In the individual moments, it gets the emotions right. There's traces of a lot of movies in this (pretty much anything in my Formula at the top) without feeling like a copy any. My big issue is with the balance. A lot of the time, when a person loses his/her balance, it's not that initial loss of balance that makes him/her fall. It's the over-correction that does it. That essentially what happens with The Glass Castle. Whenever it starts to idealize Rex's way of doing things too much, it jerks him back into being an angry drunken mess. Whenever he becomes too much of a monster, he has some sort of grand gesture that proves he's not really so bad. By the time it gets to Jeannette in college and he comes to the rescue, it's not enough to recover from. The momentum isn't there. The movie ends up being about getting to the next turn more than feeling like a cohesive story. In addition to that, the fiance/husband, played by Max Greenfield is a complete bust. I could never tell if the movie wanted me to like him or not. Sometimes he's supposed to represent a life Jeannette doesn't want. Other times, he's supposed to be something good for her that balances out her crazy family. The film does a poor job making it clear what about her adult life she's not pleased with. She's not happy, but is it dissatisfaction with her current life or the weight of her past getting in the way. Greenfield disappears at the end of the movie and it's not clear what happened to him. This is one of those rare instances when I wish a character was more thinly drawn. Then, at least I'd know not to care about him, which is what the film ultimately decides for me. The film is definitely more good than bad. It just doesn't hit some of the emotional beats as well as I'd hoped. 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend