The Eagle and the Albatross

I was looking for an interesting and entertaining movie to watch before bedtime and came across this one on FreeVee, meaning I had to endure a few commercials. The theme is golf and, being a golfer for 60+ years, I have a hard time turning away from movies with a golf theme, even a rather simplistic movie like this.

The star is Amber Liu, born in 1992 in Los Angeles, but went to Korea in 2008 to be in the K-Pop entertainment. So, while she is probably 27 or 28 during the making of this movie, she plays teenager Ji-min Kurt, or just "Jim", now an orphan after both her dad and mom died. She now travels to Pennsylvania to officially live with her aunt, the sister of her military dad. She is very good in this role.

The movie is a very mixed bad which to me lowers its rating quite a bit. While the meat of the movie is the young girl befriending an older die-hard golfer, and learning from him, there are additional stories involving her aunt selling sex toys and vibrators to the local country club women, and both the men and women in the country club lounge making frequent off-color jokes about shafts, balls, holes, all obvious sophomoric sexual references. That did not fit the tone of the golfing part of the movie and dragged it down.

All the golf here is bad golf, no one has a decent golf swing, but that doesn't really matter. The core story is about relationships and how you can find your new family if you look for the good in people.

"Let's write a star-making vehicle for a wooden K-Pop star centered around... golf." Luckily, they also included a sub-plot involving wirelessly controlled sex toys, or this may have ended up being one of the oddest films ever conceived.

Okay as an Amber stan, I've waited for this film since it's announcement date. So, I'm going to talk about Amber first in this review and then the overall cast and crew as well as production of the film- my opinions on it, anyways. I have been a fan of Amber since I was very young and I've always said that she has the potential to be a really good actress. It always infuriated me that she never really had an interest or wants to go in to acting. Her involvement on her first drama must've changed her mind- but back to Eagle and the Albatross... this film proved to me that she has what it takes to pursue projects within the movie industry. For a relatively amateur actress, and I'm saying this even despite my bias, she delivered her portrayal of Jimin really well. The last scene between her and Dan Laura's character was probably the highlight of the entire film for me, not only because it proved to me just how talented Amber can be as an actress but also because the chemistry between Amber and Dan Laura seemed so organic and authentic. I loved the dynamic between the two characters and both of the actors are extremely talented individuals. Regarding The Eagle and the Albatross as a whole, I feel like this movie was a good watch and is definitely lives up to its title of "a feel good" film -- despite the tear jerker scene towards the end... you know what I'm talking about. There were some parts of the script I would've liked to see tweaked a bit- such as some of the innuendos, the portrayal of a butch lesbian and the sudden death of a character being brushed aside without any on-screen closure... but that's just particulars and overall, I feel like it was a nice little movie. I will definitely rewatch soon!

To be honest, the only good part of the movie that I liked was Ji-min and Dan's relationship throughout the movie. That's was the part I was expecting and everything really caught me WAY off guard. I was expecting something like Seven Days in Utopia, but I was hit with a level of maturity like from the movie Sausage Party. I appreciate that they were putting in representation for the LGBTQ community, but all they did was fetishize it. Everything was cliche as hell. EVERYTHING. I was expecting something wholesome and I got this. I just wanted a nice golf movie. That's all I was expecting.

I watched Eagle and the Albatross with my daughter as she is a huge fan of the lead actress. My verdict of this movie a fun watch when you want to feel good and have a laugh at crude humor. My personal opinion is that the cinematography was really well done, the dialogue and overall script needed a bit more improvement, and the score and editing where both were a hit or miss- sometimes really well done, sometimes lacking. Overall, I feel like the acting was probably the highlight of the film. There is one scene particularly between the two lead cast members that solidifies this belief. With a bit of script adjustments I feel like Eagle and the Albatross would've excelled even more. However, for a relatively amateur film I feel like it delivered exactly what it intended. For that I'll happily give it praise.