joelcairo1941

The storyline is really contrived, and it strains too much to be artistic and clever but with no purpose. I did appreciate the Hitchcock reference to "Shadow of a Doubt," even to the point of calling the uncle Charlie. In 1943, Hitchcock toyed with the idea of evil that can lurk just on the edges of sunny pleasantness. The niece and uncle are mirror images of each other, but the niece is horrified by the distorted image that looks back at her in the form of her uncle. In the end, good wins out, and we are left to believe that the niece has successfully exorcised any evil that might have been festering inside her psyche by the death of her uncle. Hitchcock had to have such an ending to get past the censors of the day. I suspect he would have liked a much murkier ending.

**SPOILER ALERT** Seventy years later writers and directors are not hampered by the constraints of censors and are allowed much more latitude in their creations. All through the movie, the writer and director lead the audience to see India's perverse nature and her taste for killing. Indeed, she has an orgasm thinking about the way her uncle murders her would-be rapist. An ending that would have helped to maintain the integrity of the storyline would have been for India to watch Uncle Charlie kill her mother and then go off with him to become serial killers in an effort to slake both their murderous impulses. I think Hitchcock today would have approved such an ending. Instead, the writer and director use a cop-out ending of good impulses overcoming evil impulses.

There's nothing refreshing or new about Jack & Bobby. Despite all the hype about the allusions to another Jack & Bobby, it turns out that this is just another excuse for the WB network to put on a "drama" with fresh-faced suburban white kids who seem to be only preoccupied with sex and appearing cool. As for the threadbare cliché of the American presidency as the hallmark of greatness, well, we only have to look to recent history to see that such a claim is laughable. It's high time for middle-class America to take a long, hard look at itself to see that it doesn't even come close to being the breeding ground for greatness that it imagines itself to be. Rather, it perpetuates mediocrity and conformity at every turn. I'm only sorry to see the always-wonderful Christine Lahti being wasted in such tripe. Jack & Bobby -- give me a break!

I have seen this film several times, as it gets surprisingly heavy rotation on cable television. Each time I catch it, I thoroughly enjoy it.

The story line is highly improbable, but it doesn't matter because the performances (acting and dancing) are top-drawer. It's a reminder that films about the ordinary struggles of common folk can be engaging without all the special effects that one finds in the Hollywood products of today.