Review of Nebraska (2013) by Jeremyp — 14 Dec 2013

While certainly being an entertaining and watchable movie it doesn't quite rise to the level of being a good one. The quirky characters seem to often to be caricatures and too often of 2 kind: dumb and mean.

It's too much a riff on lower middle rural America, which is fine if it had any depth to it, but only Bruce Dern's son shows us complexity. The laughs are often cheap and at the expense of ageism. I'm old and know plenty of people older than me and we're not that easily type cast.

Dern does an excellent job as an old coot who has withered with alcohol and the abuse of an acerbic wife, but it's Will Forte's movie as a kind son who still sees worth in his rancorous father, and who is the only one who shows him charity.