Review of Griff the Invisible (2011) by Marie-Anne W — 22 May 2012

Maybe it's a little close to home for me, but this movie plays with the concept that "reality is what you make of it" really, really well. And if you think Griff and Melody are "too psychologically damaged to laugh at," to quote another review, what I hear is "I don't want to think about the world this way." And yeah, most people don't want to think that the world isn't cut-and-dry. But that is exactly so.

The sensing abilities humans possess, and the ones we create in order to "sense" things like radio waves and UV light are still inherently limited. Our reality changes all the time. It's unhelpful to demand logic as we choose it to be, especially in a movie, when movies are the medium we choose to explore the theoretical. Explore the extra-everything!

Leon Ford did an amazing job, and I greatly enjoyed this film. The actors are lovely, Melody is fantastic. Punches are not pulled; there is no apologetic explanation that "these are crazy people and that's so funny ha ha." Ford points to some unspoken truths, and made a coherent work out of it.

I also generally hate action movie plot development, but this film was so bizarrely wonderful I actually CARED about what was going on. It's not messy, it's just different; and actually very clean in its progression.

5 stars! for making me laugh and laugh at myself, also for some truly excellent dialogue (I am specifically thinking of near the last 15 minutes of the movie when Melody talks with her mother about the nature of the existence of life). Not preachy, really just spot on. Thank you, Leon, for making a movie I wanted to see, but I never thought someone could make well.