Rent Flipped (2010)

It's A Wonder this doesn't add Years on your Life (I know what I did there...) - Flipped review by Strovey

Do you like a cloying, syrupy look back into the past? Then Flipped is the film for you. I was looking forward to a dip into the troubles of the early romances of childhood through the eyes of director Rob Reiner who has a good track record in films. In particular When Harry Met Sally, Misery and so forth. Although his later output has diluted over the years we should have been in safe hands here.

Unfortunately instead of getting something like ‘The Way Way Back’ we seemed to get a very long episode of The Wonder Years but with none of the good parts. Yes, we get the voiceover, alongside the insights and thoughts that few, if any, 12-13-year-olds have on life. With an all-white outlook that never existed outside the pages of books, film or TV and fading and selective memories.

To save you the rest of my opinion on Flipped, if you really enjoyed The Wonder Years, you will like this film. It will not be anything new, or ground-breaking, but you will be on comfy safe ground.

The only strong or interesting part of the film is the dual narrative idea, wherein you get the same scene as seen from the point of view of Bryce and then Juli. Bryce is an a-hole in training so his opinion and views are clearly black hat, or at least initially, whereas Juli is strong and on the high-moral ground – every time. Half an hour or so in the runtime the novelty has worn off. It is not really an original idea either but I am being generous. Flipped does not challenge any preconceived ideas about the wonderous time Americans had in suburban USA in the 50s and 60s and if anything reinforces that lazy naval gazing and stereotypes. All through the film I kept recalling some of the posts and people’s views about the past on various social media sites, often whitewashed and yearning for something that they never really had in the first place.

Since watching Flipped I have found out the source novel is set in the 2000s so the decision to place us back in the late 50s and early 60s was deliberate, manipulative and cynical.

Ragging on children actors is not a cool or nice thing to do so let us say that as hard as they tried there was no believable chemistry between them, what on earth Julianna would or did see in Bryce at any point in the story is a mystery to me.

Worse still there seems to be an episodic nature to the film where something is explained and then dropped never to be addressed again. For instance, Julianna’s family is poor and only rents because her dad spends all the spare money on making sure his mentally challenged brother, Daniel, is kept in a superior private facility. Notice how being poor and having very little to your name is an external problem and an act of utter selflessness. No one is exploited or frivolous with money, no, they are really an unsung hero. Incidentally, the small section featuring ‘Daniel’ is embarrassingly acted and borderline insulting, and once it was trotted out we never saw Daniel again.

Antony Edwards, with a very odd bald head, is an utter a-hole and as unlikeable as possible, grumpy, judgmental, daughter slapping, yet holds a secret that has weighed heavy on him since his days in college, we get the hint of this at the ‘dinner party’ and then it is never expanded on, brought up or explained at all. It is like it never happened.

Fraiser’s dad, John Mahoney, rocks up as the reliable wise old grand-dad of Bryce who ‘likes’ Juliianna because she reminds him of his dead wife…..hmmmm. A stock cardboard cut-out grand-dad figure who seems to have a storyline for short while and then that is dropped too….

All in all nothing much happens throughout the story except for some really odd and disturbing set-pieces, the boy and the basket auction, Uncle Daniel, the sycamore tree, spying on Bryce in the library, and who can forget the eggs, can we not talk about the eggs?

Not recommended