Review of Flipped (2010) by Philip C — 21 Dec 2010

It's been a long while since I've seen anything by Rob Reiner so to finally check out Flipped was basically a dream come true. Flipped tells the story of Bryce Loski (played by Callan McAuliffe) who upon entering the seventh grade realizes that he suddenly has feelings for his annoying and yet cute neighbour Juli Baker (played by the always-fantastic Madeline Carroll). He feels strange because for the longest time he couldn't stand her and now he thinks that he's falling in love with her.

And that plain and simple, is what sets up Reiner's nice, sweet, charming, funny and cute flashback to the 50's and 60's. It takes place in the late 50's and early 60's so what immediately works is the set design. Every single little detail is pitch perfect and gives a very accurate view into that time. Part of me almost wishes that I could build a time machine and go all the way back there. It seemed like life was so much simpler than, a far less "evil" presented itself back then too. Not to mention being a greaser would be so much incredible fun. And as far as historical accuracy goes, it's spot on. The hair, the clothing, the cars that people drive, the bikes they ride, the soundtrack that was used, the white-picket fences, the way people talk etc...

The acting here is somewhat of a gamble because despite the large number of cast members, Flipped relies mostly on the shoulders of its two young leads (McAuliffe and Carroll) and they are absolutely wonderfull (so the gamble thankfully does pay off). The way they speak their lines, the way they carry themselves, showing all of that emotion and genuine screen presence is quite astounding actually. And they actually go well together onescreen which is of the utmost importance. Now that's not to say that they do all of the heavy lifting. The rest of the cast is rounded out by: Aidan Quinn (who's always been a great actor with a great performance here), Anthony Edwards, John Mahoney, Kevin Weisman, Rebecca De Mornay and Penelope Anne Miller etc...).

The writing is very well done. It's adapted from the book of the same name by Wendelin Van Draanen. Now I've never read the book but after seeing the film I may just do exactly that. It's cleverly written, smart and at times pretty funny. An interesting aspect to the film is that it balances two different perspectives. At first it will show a scene from Bryce's point of view and then switch Juli's point of view of the same scene slightly later on. It's this interruption of the basic narrative that I thought worked really well. Seeing the same thing from more than one angle is very eye-opening if nothing else.

As mentioned earlier, I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Being born in the 90's I'm not particularly into 60's music but all of the tunes that they had were actually quite catchy (thus why I'm getting several of them on my iPod as we speak).

But for all of Flipped's great qualities it does have a few (if minor) flaws. Particularly having to do with the ending. Now I'll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible but for good measure and so that I don't get yelled at I'm going to say CAUTION SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, now that we have that over with, where was I? Oh right, yes the ending. Firstly, I did really enjoy the ending. In fact I really really really really really really did, especially because the ending left me with a big smile on my face, without making this sound really sappy and cheesy it honestly warmed my heart, no word of a lie, it actually did. Though as much as I did like it, I felt that it was cut a bit short. For me personally I would have liked a little more closure to be had. For example I wanted to know more about Bryce's dad and didn't like the way they ended with his character, I wanted to know more about Bryce's grandfather, more about Juli's father, more about Juli's brothers, I wanted to see more development with the relationship between Bryce and his sister, but probably most of all I wanted to see more closer and development between Bryce and his best friend Garrett (play by Israel Broussard). Now don't get me wrong because I still really liked the ending as it was. The film runs a decent 90 minutes, but I would have liked to have seen maybe an extra 15 minutes added on to bring it in at a better ending with 105 minutes.

Overall Flipped is a nice, warm, fuzzy slice of 60's pie that is wholesome, genuine, very well-acted, very well-written that does run into a few flaws here and there due to the lack of some character development and proper closure. Despite those few flaws it's still a very soft and enjoyable little romantic comedy (in the best sense of the word of course) that needs to be sifted through all of Hollywood's never-ending pile of crap and checked out. It's one ride that I believe is worth taking.