Finding Forrester

How about 5,000 words on why you'll stay the fuck out of my home!

A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( * * * * * ) DVD Rating: ( * * * · · )

Movies are both a blessing and a curse. They are a window to lives we will never live and worlds we will never see. They show the extraordinary to people who will never get out of the ordinary. They are simply a new medium that exists for the same reason all stories have. To show us something greater than we are. The blessing is that we get to see it, the curse is that it will never be. Tyler Durdon said a lot of truths, but one that stands out more than any other is this. "We were raised on television to believe that we'd all be millionaires, movie gods, rock stars, but we won't and we're starting to figure that out...and we're really really pissed off." All our lives we are fed images of Einstein and MTV's Real World to tell us how smart and beautiful we should be. We are always fed the examples of the top .00001% of our society as if each of us has a duty to be that great. But as Homer says (Simpson, not the fucking author of The Odyssey) no matter how good we are at something, there are only a million people better.

Finding Forrester is another movie that shows us the .0001% and makes us wish we could all be that smart. It makes us all want to be pultizer writers and date Domino's ads too seriously. Finding Forrester is just one of a million movies that shows us just how much we really suck. But it does so very well.

Finding Forrester could be called the sister of Good Will Hunting. They are both directed by Matt Damon is, he still does a great job of holding the very complex character together. His family and friends on both sides of the tracks are done perfectly, avoiding just about every cliche' one would expect. There is a little bit of the neat and tidy ending on this one, something movie writers should learn to avoid by reading a lot of Stephen King, but it doesn't detract too much from the beauty of the rest of the movie.

The DVD has a clear 2.35 to 1 16x9 enhanced transfer and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. There is no directors commentary, though it does include a making of feature and a special feature on the lead actor. Still, directors commentaries are about the most useful extra you can find on a movie like this and it is a crime not to include one.

Finding Forrester is only different from MTV's The Grind in that it has good writing and good acting instead of a hundred perfect 16 year olds having sex with another hundred perfect 16 year olds 24 hours a day. It still invokes a sense that we were meant for something greater than what we are, but doesn't let us off the hook by reminding us that we were not meant to ride the white horse. We are not beautiful and unique snowflakes, we are the same decomposing matter as everything else. The minute we can realize that, the minute we can begin to grow.