Movie
Review of Brooklyn
Lobster
By Drew Kopf
People are saying “Brooklyn
Lobster” is a wonderful film. But, though it has some convincing acting
and some nice moments, it left me wondering why the author and director kept
the whole thing so sketchy.
A long-standing third-generation
local business is threatened with extinction apparently through no fault of
its owner and all we get in the way of substantive details are: (1) the occasional
emotional outburst by the anti-hero, played by Danny Aiello, who is seen (2)
struggling on his own with what he should do, but without even a hint of a
worthwhile option tossed out for us to be able to know anything about his
thought process, (3) family members and close friends of the Aiello character
who offer what they can to help him out of his jam only to be rejected, criticized
and maligned by him while he watches his world slip uncontrollably though
his fingers for no apparent reason, since (4) he is obviously sitting on a
real estate goldmine but (5) has no clue how to use his assets to extricate
himself from his situation.
We see his offspring in
action and can see exactly where they get their evaluative acumen; from him.
And, we see how his paralytic business condition is exacerbated by his ridiculously
foolish tactics or strategy. The man pays no attention to what the ramifications
of his sophomoric actions to protect his position might be. It is really a
stretch for us to believe that a person in his fields of endeavor, wholesale
distribution of live lobsters and owner and manager of a restaurant, is as
vulnerable and inept as he is depicted as being. His son shows himself to
us as one who knows every aspect of what has made the family business a success.
He obviously got his good training and smooth management techniques from his
dad and from people trained by his dad.
Sure his father has certain
workers on his staff who are not the sharpest tools in the tool box; but they
do their jobs and he is really to be praised in our minds as a person how
shares the wealth and gives the less fortunate a way to earn their living
in an honorable way. He learned from those who came before him and from the
mistakes they made; he tells us this in a story he relates to his son.
So, are we really to believe
that smart business people are automatically turned into blithering idiots
and imbeciles the moment they are confronted with lawyers, court rooms and
governmental agency sharks who smell blood in the water? Are we really supposed
to believe that the help offered by friends and his own wife would get blown
off just because this rough-around-the-edges cream puff of a sentimentalist
is too proud to let people help him? If he knows that big chains stores are
aching for him to sign on with them, are we supposed to believe that he can
not figure out that he has a tiger by the tail in the person of his business’
location and the property he owns?
If we had all the facts,
i.e. what is the property really worth, and how much money does he really
owe; we might be able to swallow this story, but as it is presented, what
he might owe is nowhere near what the property might be worth, so, there is
really no great drama here.
So many films these days
have real instead of threatened violence, so perhaps we are waiting for that.
But, short of that kind of excitement, this story goes absolutely nowhere
and we learn very little if anything from it. Good acting, it has. But that's
about it.
January 1, 2006
