Review of Flipped (2010) by Matt B — 24 Jan 2011

I really wanted to like this movie: it had some good actors that I haven't seen in a while, a clever storytelling device (alternating between the boy and girls' perspective), and it seemed to be a family friendly movies that I could watch with the kids.

Well, it was pretty innocuous and "family friendly", but everything else about it was just bad. The movie is set in the early sixties, but it is filled with anachronisms (did anybody use phrases like "visually challenged" then?).

The melodrama seems predictable and forced (when a mentally disabled person is taken out for a fun trip to the ice cream parlor is it any surprise what happens? Could the sudden emotional outbursts in either family be any more cliched?) Anthony Edwards comes off especially bad, but there probably wasn't much he could do with such a one dimensional part.

Even the "he said she said" device ends up being just a gimmick; a lot could have been done with this, showing how differently two people can perceive the same incident, but it is wasted. All in all this felt like a mediocre television program: the laughs are predictable, the emotions fake.

Bad movies usually leave me angry, but this one just made me sad; a lot of talent and a clever premise squandered.