"Our past belongs to us, we can change it if we want."The majority of this movie just does not work at all unless you apply a new lens to it– that every character we see is meant to actually be like, a third of their age. Then, it's kind of a masterpiece to me. Everything about this film begs you to see it as a childhood tale, from all the logic to all of the execution to all of the choices and decisions people make. Feels spiritually connected to Hot Rod in that sense (and really feels like the spiritual bridge between Hot Rod and Brigsby Bear!)Ultimately, this is a movie about stories and legends. About keeping the past alive through legend as history (and memory) become impermanent. About community and the special place that a legend holds in keeping that community alive, whether that's because they know the legend or they created it. This is Gondry's Big Fish and his Cinema Paradiso. A really beautiful story that celebrates impermanence and welcomes the changing of the guard while acknowledging that the places and stories and even technologies we weigh as important are nothing without the people that drive them.It is faaaaaascinating that Michel Gondry made a movie about the death and preservation of childhood imagination and the encroaching threat (and acceptance) of adulthood/Big Hollywood as the killer of creativity right after making The Science of Sleep (an imaginative cardboard fantasy film based on the bedtime stories of a 10-year old) and right before making The Green Hornet (Gondry's first– and last– big studio film.) Like a painter drawing a solemn goodbye to his brushes before picking up an Apple Pencil.I think about the final 15 minutes of this movie so often. As a visual, the last scene in the video store has just rung in my head for almost a decade now. I think they're some of my favorite final minutes of any movie I've ever seen and they are so so moving to me. Then the final minute comes and I burst into tears. I feel like a loser for it but it's just so fucking powerful to me! Movies about amateurs making movies and people loving movies will always always really get me when presented as an act of love. I've long thought of this as one of my favorite movies for those minutes alone– in spite of the rest of it. (Forgot that there's a lot of PURPOSEFULLY iffy race stuff in this movie. Dark times, 2008! Great year for ironic blackface in Jack Black films, though.)edit: almost forgot– gotta give a big shout out to this movie as the only movie i can think of where "magnetized piss" is a plot element, much less a major conflict resolution. magnetized piss. don't let it undermine the emotional things i just said but... you know. pee pee got magnets in it
