Educando a Bobby

I saw Famke Janssen on a panel with Nicole Kidman at the Nashville Film Festival. Mrs. Janssen was well spoken and impressive so I thought I would see her film. It's very strange but wonderful. The idea of it is great; a Ukrainian woman who grew up on American movies and hustles her way through Oklahoma, using those movies as the basis for her understanding of the American dream. American cinema clearly shapes foreigner's view of who we are, which was an interesting theme to see the director explore. Throughout Bringing Up Bobby, Mila Jovivich uses quotes from some of the greatest movies of all time time, movies that clearly shaped her opinion about America. I caught some references (I think) from Gone With the Wind, China Town and Bonnie and Clyde. I am sure there are others in there as well that I missed. But for movie buffs, that was a fun aspect of the film.

The reality is that Bringing Up Bobby is almost two separate movies. The first half of the film feels like a slapstick, easy going and over the top homage to the 1930s, while the second half feels like a 1970's film. The second half is very gritty and more realistic. One can argue with the outcome of such an effort, but the ambition is certainly there for this 1st time director. It's always nice to see an independent film take risks and think outside the box. Bobby tried to do that and sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it falls short. Where it falls short is really on the acting. I agree with some of the other comments about Mrs. Jovovich's performance, as it is a little uneven and I felt like in the first part of the film especially, you could see the acting. She did a much better job during the second part of the film when she had to be emotional and the action required a visceral reaction from her.

The music in this film is really fantastic, book marked on the one end by Ukrainian/Russian folk songs and on the other with real Americana music.

The movie doesn't completely succeed but I applaud the effort and look forward to seeing what Mrs. Janssen does next.

I saw this movie in Savannah at the Film Festival. I really enjoyed this movie from start to finish. After the movie the Director did a Q&A which answered the few problems I had to the film which I can be forgiving for. It starts out with a foreign feel with lots of natural lighting and some poor sound clips taking the performance away from the actors. But as the movie progresses and you build a relationship with the characters the movie gets more and more precious. The director was very fortunate to have the actors and actresses to work with for her first film as a director. Milla's performance really is outstanding throughout telling you the story of her travels and struggles to win her boy back.

At the video store, this DVD caught my eye immediately because of my longtime girl crush Milla Jovovich on the front cover. I grabbed it straight off the shelf, without hesitation. I knew it would more than likely be a dud film, but I just love to watch Milla and was excited that this film could possibly, maybe, turn out to be an 'okay' film.

Well, this film is a complete dud. I cringed the whole way through. The mundane story line had potential, but the script and direction was just terrible. I did not know if this was supposed to be a comedy film or a drama. Either way, it failed in every possible category.

The character of Olive (Milla Jovovich), was so over the top and one dimensional. Olive, the stereotypical beautiful Russian single mother con, was a character that was over exaggerated and incredibly annoying. It is not even worth going into any more detail about the characters in this film because it all just sucked. It would be as pointless as analyzing your own vomit after vomiting. The only emotion that this film evoked for me, was sadness over why Milla Jovovich played such a crap character in such a crap film. Milla completely over acted in this film, but that was really the only thing that added slight intrigue. Along with her wardrobe.

If you like Milla, then watch it for the sake of seeing Millas beauty on screen. Otherwise, do not bother with this film ... unless you want to spend an hour or so baffled at how anyone could write such a terrible script.

Bringing up Bobby - The kind of film that my thirteen year old self would have written back in the day. Pretty clothes, pretty leading lady and pretty ridiculous.

A stab at a comedy mingled with drama. It doesn't entirely work, even if the actors at work do try their best (even if it doesn't feel like that at times). The story being told from the point of view of Milla is interesting. It might have been more interesting, if we'd seen the whole thing through the eyes of the son. There are times when you wonder what is going on there.

Apart from that you have a stellar cast together. Which of course might have to do with the fact, that Famke Jansen is directing. Not a bad try for a movie and I'm sure the script did sound great too. The making it into a movie process, is entirely different of course and there are quite a lot of flaws to be found here (character but also plot wise). A nice little movie then

Synopsis looked promising. But fell terribly flat of all expectations. We only watched it to the end hoping for something redeeming. Listed as a comedy, but not one thing comically amusing. It had the potential to be a realistic touching and poignant movie of a failing mother having to make a choice between staying with her son, or letting foster parents raise him. But her failings are so over the top as to be unbelievable. This can be acceptable if it was farcically funny... but it is not... just painful in the way that she raises her son in a way that he can do no wrong even though that is all he does is wrong. The mother's accent is so fake that I thought it was part of her shtick. The actress, though born in Kiev does not have an accent in interviews, so had to create this one, but it just does not ring true. This is about as low as I'd rate any movie that I watched all the way through.