AntZ
31-03-2006, 03:47 AM
The difference between a good and a bad movie, especially when it relates to adaptions from a novel, is the ability to portray the characters in a realistic manner that brings the story to life. In this respect The Inivisble succeeded admirably for me.
As I said in the synopsis, it is the tale of a high school student (Niklas) who wants to escape from the pressure his mother exerts over him so much that he books a ticket to fly overseas without telling her. He tells his best friend (Peter) this, and thinking that Niklas has left, Peter tells the school bully (Annelie) that Niklas had ratted her out to the cops about a shop theft to stop her from beating him up.
What Peter didn't know is that Niklas' mother had found the ticket and had pressured him into staying with her, so when Annelie and her gang (including Peter, who they dragged along with them) went looking for him, they found him and beat him to near death in the mistaken belief that he was a rat. The movie after this point revolves around the aftermath of this beating and the interactions, lives and feelings of the people involved.
What first appears as a simple movie, quickly becomes a masterpiece of dialogue, emotion and acting that echoed deeply with how I felt as a teenager and in a lot of ways still feel now. There is a slight over-exaggeration of high-school relationships, but the way it is presented was enough to keep me hooked to the end.
The shining point of the movie though for me was the lack of the stereotypical Hollywood ending which would have robbed the movie of the feeling and the resonance I felt towards the main characters. The stereotypical Hollywood-style ending would be that Niklas recovered, his mother stopped trying to control him, he found true love with Annelie and lived happily ever after. Instead I was caught off-guard and left deeply moved and almost in tears as I saw the way that my life could have easily gone if I had made a few different choices with it.
There are points of morbid humour in it that left me smiling, in fact my only problem with this movie is that a remake of it is now in post-production and it stars people like "annoying son of Tom Cruise from War of the Worlds", "flunky to hot evil vampire chick from Blade Trinity" and "dancer from Scary Movie 4 (they actually fucking made that many?)".
As I said in the synopsis, it is the tale of a high school student (Niklas) who wants to escape from the pressure his mother exerts over him so much that he books a ticket to fly overseas without telling her. He tells his best friend (Peter) this, and thinking that Niklas has left, Peter tells the school bully (Annelie) that Niklas had ratted her out to the cops about a shop theft to stop her from beating him up.
What Peter didn't know is that Niklas' mother had found the ticket and had pressured him into staying with her, so when Annelie and her gang (including Peter, who they dragged along with them) went looking for him, they found him and beat him to near death in the mistaken belief that he was a rat. The movie after this point revolves around the aftermath of this beating and the interactions, lives and feelings of the people involved.
What first appears as a simple movie, quickly becomes a masterpiece of dialogue, emotion and acting that echoed deeply with how I felt as a teenager and in a lot of ways still feel now. There is a slight over-exaggeration of high-school relationships, but the way it is presented was enough to keep me hooked to the end.
The shining point of the movie though for me was the lack of the stereotypical Hollywood ending which would have robbed the movie of the feeling and the resonance I felt towards the main characters. The stereotypical Hollywood-style ending would be that Niklas recovered, his mother stopped trying to control him, he found true love with Annelie and lived happily ever after. Instead I was caught off-guard and left deeply moved and almost in tears as I saw the way that my life could have easily gone if I had made a few different choices with it.
There are points of morbid humour in it that left me smiling, in fact my only problem with this movie is that a remake of it is now in post-production and it stars people like "annoying son of Tom Cruise from War of the Worlds", "flunky to hot evil vampire chick from Blade Trinity" and "dancer from Scary Movie 4 (they actually fucking made that many?)".