From the IMDB’s Trivia page on this film: “Jim Jarmusch finished the script in two and a half weeks.” And that kinda says it all. Many times during this good-enough-I-guess film I was wondering “is Jarmusch just kinda mailing it in?” Maybe that’s what the whole postal system motif is for? There are good individual moments, I suppose. And if you’ve never seen a Jarmusch film you might be tickled by his style. And if you missed “Lost in Translation” or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou you might get off on the Bill Murray’s sad-guy thing. I remain unimpressed. There isn’t anything wrong with this movie. . .there’s just nothing I haven’t seen many times before — and better. (Forget the “Jarmusch tone” and formal elements — the damned plot is old. The movie “Seven Girlfriends” is virtually the same story, and there’s a whole section of “High Fidelity” devoted to tracking down exes, too. Plus — the premise, here, makes no sense at all. He wants to find out who his son is? And the son is coming to see him? Why not stay put?!) Ann liked it more than I did, I think; she was digging on the set design, which was, indeed, impressive.
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Welcome
Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.
I have to agree with the “mailing it in” metaphor. This approach used to work for Jarmusch when his stuff was in beautiful black and white and he was using East Village hipsters in starring roles. But with a gold mine like Bill Murray and the dangling carrot of a plot, his follow-through just seems lazy, though I did think it picked up pretty well in the last 20 minutes. And the Lolita thing was priceless. I’m guessing more than half his reason for doing this movie was to use the name Don Johnston, kinda like the Wiliam Blake thing in Dead Man…yawn.
Oh, and I think the given reason for Murray’s journey was something to the effect of…”I’ve got to find out who’s son it is so I can stop him from coming here before he gets here.” Which is, yes, still kinda goofy…
Only problem with your Dead Man analysis. . .Dead Man rocks! (or, at least, it does in my memory.)
I kinda liked Dead Man too. But the “William Blake” joke just grew old, fast.
You’re both so terribly wrong! I found Broken Flowers heartbreaking. There wasn’t a boring scene in the movie, so I’m not sure what’s “lazy” about it. It’s carefully crafted, and Jarmush makes the audience work fairly hard, upsetting expectations etc. The difference to the plot of “Seven Girlfriends” and “High Fidelity” is that there’s no happy end–huge difference. The last shot is absolutely amazing. This is my favorite Jarmush movie in a long time. C is pretty damn harsh, given that you seem sorta ambivalent about it.
hey mr hoffman are you a teacher at yula? do you like greek stuff?
I don’t know what Yula is, so the answer is no. I like spinach pie.