THE SQUID & THE WHALE - noah baumbach - 4.0 / 10

Basically just a Wes Anderson movie made with seriousness instead of humor, The Squid & the Whale is almost a complete failure on every level. The people in this horrifically titled film are just terrible (and not completely convincingly realistic) examples of humanity. Basically the entire first hour of the film is a collection of these hideous people doing deeply embarrassing things. And not just embarrassing but lifetime-of-psychotherapy-required mortifying. Things like pretending you wrote Pink Floyd's "Hey You" or making your son's girlfriend pay for her own dinner or masturbating in public or not letting your twelve year-old son beat you at ping-pong. Not only does almost nobody in the world lack the basic social grace to do any of these things, the idea that I might want to sit down and watch them do it for an hour and a half is absolutely stupid.