Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Book of Henry

Episode Date: June 18, 2017

On the week of it’s release in June of 2017, Griffin and David discussed the new Colin Trevorrow film: The Book of Henry.

Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Never leave anything un-podcasted! Great. Hello everybody. It's time for an emergency episode of Blank Check with Griffin and David.

My name is Griffin Newman. I'm David Sims. Red alert. Emergency episode. We've got the red mood light. We're recording right now in a studio where we only have red lights turned on. Dark, moody lead lights. It either looks like an emergency situation, so a submarine, or we're all going to fuck each other.

Yeah, we're in the, this is Crimson Tide 2. It does feel like it. I'm Gene Hackman. I'm Denzel Washington. With us, as always, is producer Tony Scott, a.k.a. Purdueer Tony Scott. Yada, yada. Okay, emergency episode Tony Scott, a.k.a. Purdue-er Tony Scott. Yada, yada. Okay, emergency episode.

Hey. Red alert, red alert. Oh. We know everyone's been waiting for our Christopher Nolan miniseries. Well, you're going to have to keep waiting. Yeah. One more week. The pod night will cast, but not for another week.

What if every week there's a movie as crazy as this movie, so we just keep having it? Look, look, we know you want to hear the Nolan. We recorded it six years ago, but we just have to talk about whatever. Can I make you a promise right now? Yeah. If every week there's a movie as crazy as this one, I will murder myself. Great.

Oh, God. Please, hey, don't do that. All right, anyway. If every week there's a movie as crazy as this, I will leave detailed instructions for how you should murder me. That's what I will do. On the record. On the record. Okay, so emergency episode. A movie's come out this week.

Quietly. Yeah, pretty quietly. It tried to just sneak past everyone. Correct. But anyone who saw it can't stop talking about it. Yes, i.e. 14 people can't stop talking about it. Yeah. It's a way that ties into certain themes that have been going on with our show.

It's very much a blank check movie. It's directed by a man who I've often encouraged our listeners to punch in the penis. Attack. Yes. To injure. Also, this man is next going to make a Phantom Menace movie.

He's slated to make the ninth Phantom Menace movie. He's going to direct a Star War. And so there are overlaps here. Now, this is not a bad movie podcast. It's not like we're just going to, any time a stinker comes out, team up to rag on. Right, and I want to make that click because I feel like that's more my bugaboo than yours. But it's for sure. I don't want this to be a bad movie

podcast because I think there's a lot of podcasts that do that really well. Agreed. And we've done our last couple miniseries have been mostly directors who have a lot of success. Right. And obviously yes we've started off as a Phantom Menace you know we've talked about the Star Wars prequels yada yada yada. But Chowski,

Shyamalan Crowe are all people who sort of fell from grace at least in terms of the court of public opinion even then though we've always been movie fans first and that's one of the things that makes our podcast so good this podcast is called blank check by the right we try to find something good about every movie yeah we really do i think we really do i agree but you saw a movie at a critic screening on wednesday and texted me and said i don't i don't understand this i it's bonkers. I mean, it's bonkers. It felt like a dream I had. You know when you have a dream

that you see a movie and then you wake up and you're like, oh, that movie didn't make any sense within my dream, obviously. Once I dreamed before The Dark Knight had come out, speaking of Christopher Nolan, no, before The Dark Knight Rises came out, I dreamed that I saw it. Oh, I do that all the time with movies I'm excited for.

I dream them and they don't make sense. Right. I saw it, but it was outside and it was like being projected onto the sky. And it was called 20 Years But More Italians. That was the name of the movie. Wow. Yes. So I'll have dreams like that where I dream that I'm seeing The Dark Knight Rises, but then the

second the dream, like in the dream when the movie ends, I walk out of the theater, I'm like, oh wait, that's weird that Catwoman wasn't in it at all. Because she was in the trailers and Anne Hathaway's like part of the advertising campaign. It's just like, oh, your dumb memory for a god. Okay.

Okay, anyway. Sorry. You saw this movie and said, it's bonkers. It kind of broke me. And then I went to go see Captain Underpants, the first epic movie, by myself on a Thursday in the most on-brand move of all time.

Yeah, in the most Griffin thing that's ever happened. Have we introduced ourselves in the name of this podcast? Yeah. I'm Griffin. And you're David Simms. This is Blank Shack with Griffin and David. Okay. Sorry.

Just wanted to make sure. Ben Dusser. Okay. The Poet Laureate. Okay. The Haas. Okay. Mr. Positive.

Okay. Ty Breaker. Okay. Bertha Benny. Okay. Dirt Bike Benny. Okay. Sookin' Wet Benny.

Okay. The Meat Detective. The Fart Lover. Please, go on. We've introduced ourselves. Yes. We're all here. It's all here.

I don't know anything about this movie. I've never even heard of it. So I walk out of Captain Underpants and what's starting at the screen right next to mine, the 7 o'clock Thursday night first showing publicly of this movie and I went, I gotta do it. I gotta face it. I gotta open the book. Right. Gotta open the book of Henry.

And that's what I did. I opened the book of Henry and I texted David and I said we gotta do it. And I said no, please no. I don't want to. Let's not do it. And I said, no, please no. I don't want to. Let's not do it. Because we don't like ragging on movies. Honestly.

And I honestly don't. As much as I think Colin Trevorrow is a bad filmmaker. Someone begging to have his penis punched. You know, and I'm not a fan. I do get a little sick of the sort of herd or horde mentality that can build up on the internet about certain filmmakers, about certain artists, about certain actors. Yeah. And like, look, the guy made a bad movie. It's not like he's out here being.

Correction. The guy made three bad movies. Sure. But each worse. Well, no, actually, the second movie is the best of them. But, you know. Well, I disagree with that. What's, you think Safety Not Guaranteed is better than Jurassic Park?

I do. All right. Go watch Safety Not Guaranteed, my friend. You will reverse that opinion. I mean, this is like ranking different types of syphilis. No, I'm serious. Because I think people are – that's a common – and like go watch Safety Not Guaranteed. I hate Safety Not Guaranteed.

It will blow your mind how much you hate it. I hate that movie. I like more of that movie. Listen to me piling on. No, I like Jurassic Park because it has dinosaurs in it, which are cool, even though they do a lot of things I don't agree with. Politically. Yeah, exactly. I'm politically anti-dinosaur.

No, but so yeah, so I don't want to be like kicking the guy when he's down, essentially. Agreed. And as I said, we usually, even when we talk about movies that are disastrous, really try to find the silver lining in that. Well, not only that, we are fascinated with the directors.

Like George Lucas and Night Shyamalan, Cameron Crowe, they make bad movies, but we're still like, you know, there was a point in our lives when we were into these guys, or there will be a point again. And as, you know, our past... I've never been into this motherfucker. As our past and future guest

J.D. Amato, friend of the podcast, has said, he thinks every movie is about its director. Yeah. You know? And I still can't fucking crack this guy's psychology. No. It's a mess, but these three movies are very different.

Yes. They're all fucked up in different ways. There are some similarities. I think there's some similarities. There are some, but I still can't figure out what the fuck is driving him. I don't either.

I don't know that anything is. You know, there are some directors where it's like, you know, maybe probably best not to overthink it because like in the end of the day they just want to make movies and they you know he's not someone who he writes uh no he very much refers to himself as a screenwriter even though he hasn't really written on his he has two writing credits and it's the two jurassic worlds uh he's not the writer of safety not guaranteed or this movie but i, but I assume he had a hand in writing them.

But yeah, he's more of a director. He wants to direct. He talks to himself as a screenwriter in interviews. I read interviews of his because I'm a masochist. He's a tough guy in an interview, I'll admit. He doesn't come off great sometimes. But anyway, he made a movie. He made a movie, The Book of Henry.

Now look, I love Hyperbole. Some would say I like hyperbole. You always say it funny. It's fine. Carry on. I can't say hyperbole. I can't say hyperbole. I mean, you can if you want.

No one's stopping you. Carry on. I love hyperbole. Yes. Okay? Yes. Some could say I like hyperbole more than anyone else in the world. You're a fan.

Oh, here it comes. Here comes some hyperbole. I just figured out what you're setting up. But I walked out of this movie. Uh-huh. And before I walked out, around 30 minutes in, I went, geez, is this happening? This is my least favorite movie I have ever seen. Period.

Full stop. End of sentence. Rip out the page. Burn it. I disagree. But it is a very bad movie. It's probably the worst film I've seen this year. Look, I'm not saying this is the worst movie

ever made. I would never make any claim like that. I will say I have never hated watching a movie more. What's it beating? Francis Ford Coppola's Jack. That used to be the movie I hated watching the most. I think I I think I hate Jack more than this movie. There's a lot of movies I hate more than this movie for the reason

that I wouldn't like a movie like Jack, which is like Those are similar movies, Jack and Book of Henry. They have a lot of similar qualities that make me hate them. Weird manipulativeness and atonal kind of. Right. And this maudlin, like quasi-maudlin. Oh, childlike wonder

but with some really dark kind of psychologically fucked up stuff that it has no control over oscillating between really glib humor. Actors punching way below their weight class. Yes. But anyway, it is a very bad film. I wrote a review of it on The Atlantic where I work. You can read it.

I think it's a failure of a movie in every way. Yeah, I'd agree. And so, right. And so it's not usually the kind of movie I want to talk about on this podcast. I'll admit, yes, there is something fascinating about like why it exists. Right. That's probably the only thing that kind of keeps you on board. It kept me on board for the hour hour 45 minutes or however long it is.

Where you're just like, what does he want from us? What is this trying to convey? What's the play? So here's our plan with this episode. And I just want to say, I saw it with Emily Ishida, past and future guest,

mother and blankies, one of our greatest guests. And Armand White, past and future guest. And Armand White. Father of blankies. You did sit between. I wasand White. Father of blankies. You did sit between. I was sitting between the two of them.

And Emily and I were both pretty bewildered by the movie. We were howling by the end of it, as was Armand. How.fm. Sure. The Widow Hal app. That's one of my favorite weird Scott Ackerman jokes. He calls the Widow cool app the Widow Hal app.

And we were like, Jesus. So we were like, fuck, we gotta get... I was like, can we get a drink? We gotta talk about it. You gotta talk about this movie. And while we were getting a drink,

Emily was talking about the movie. She was like, you know, that is a blank check movie. That's a blank check movie. A hundred percent. And even though it's like a small budget movie, she's right.

It is. It's a weird blank check. There would have been a lot more stop signs if that guy hadn't just made the third highest grossing movie in history. Now, in my opinion, this is the blank check movie you get to make after making Safety Not Guaranteed, which is basically what it was in a weird sort of a way because he almost did make it after Safety Not Guaranteed. In terms of style and size, yes. But I think people would have gone like, wait a second, the script is fucked up. Well, I think if –

They would have questioned what he was doing more if he hadn't made Jurassic World. Maybe, but we'll talk about the script. Okay. But anyway, it is a blank check movie in some sense. Everyone who's fucking tweeting at me all the time telling me how my show works, shut up. I know what goes on my show, not you, you little nerds. But yeah, it is kind of a blank check movie. Wow, people are going to love this episode.

So here's the deal. We have both seen this movie. They bullied me into doing this episode. I am going to call them little nerds. To be fair, I bullied you into doing this. Yeah, you definitely did. We've both seen this movie. Producer Ben has not.

No, he has not. I think we told, I said at least in the text convo, in the thread, I was like, Ben, don't see it. It wasn't an obvious. Have you even seen the trailer? No. So what do you know about this movie? I know it's called Book of Henry.

Perfect. And you know it's directed by Colin Trevorrow, whose Wikipedia you have loaded. I just started looking. I don't know very much about Colin Trevorrow. There he is. So here's the plan. This is the second episode we record today. We rarely do that

because it usually makes us go crazy. Right, but we're a little crazy. We're trying to weaponize this. So this is going to be a bonus episode. It's going to aim to be

a little tighter than we usually are because it's an emergency. Ben is about to put one hour on the clock. Yeah, Ben, you got it ready? Yes, for sure. Now we love our tangents.

We love being verbose. We do. Our goal is, within an hour, to fully explain to Ben what happens in this movie. I think we can do that. I don't think it's that hard. The plot is very convoluted. It is.

There are a lot of weird wrinkles. But it's easy enough to just... Yeah, anyway. Also, we should note, I am not cutting anything out. Anything. Zero edits. Use the timer, not the stopwatch. Oh, sure.

You're right. Because I want an alarm when it goes. Tell me when you started it. Okay. All right. So, I wanted to pick the sound. And Ben, if you don't understand something in how we're describing the movie, ask us, okay?

Yeah, sure. If anything's confusing, don't let us just be like, anyway, what happens is this. If you want to figure something out that we're not conveying, let us know. The goal here is for you to get the secondhand osmosis experience of having seen the Book of Henry. Right. And the same goal for, I would say, some of our listeners. Right.

We want it to be complete. So any follow-up questions, any clarifications? Shoot. Timer started? Starting now. Okay, so it's a Focus Features release. True. Made by Focus Features, which is a branch of Universal where he made Jurassic World.

Right. Specialty arm. Used to be one of the power players in the field. Has sort of backed off now. A little bit, but you know, whatever. It's more of a distribution company for genre films than what used to be the studio behind Lost in Translation. Sure. Highbrow Oscar movies, okay?

Yes. But that very much tells you what kind of patina he thinks this movie's in. Griffin's favorite word. Karen. Love patina. I heard Ron Perlman use it in an interview once 10 years ago, and I looked it up, and I was like, I'm going to use that whenever I can.

Yes, it is a green or brown film on the surface of bronze or similar metals produced by oxidation over a long period. Okay, David, we only have an hour. You don't want me to read the other dictionary? I mean, read the other ones so people know why I'm using the word. Okay, okay. Oh, is that why the Statue of Liberty looks like that? Yes, yes.

Oh. But anyway, it's kind of the world they play in, right? The sort of their palette. It's like the tonal veneer. Yes. Okay. world they play in right the the sort of it's like their palette the tonal veneer yes okay so this movie immediately establishes its own patina which is like fucking like third-rate amblin yes it sort of has especially in the beginning in the title sequence the title cards which is

like drawings that a child did of like wings and ferris wheelberg machines you're seeing the titular book the pages of the book ben and they're animated it has the feeling of an 80s spielberg movie a little bit or i would say yeah like a 90s kid movie a little bit those kinds of like what's like a good example like simon birch yes like some like movie that's maybe a little dark but also kind of whimsical and intended for you know young viewers right but like not not as much like a supernatural thing as like a radio flyer kind of like your childhood was tough sometimes kind of right right almost like wonder years i mean it's set now but it kind of apart from the fact that like the mom plays a playstation three or 4 or whatever,

and I guess they have cell phones, but there's not a lot of indication that it's taking place in the 21st century. And in fact, get ready, Ben, because there is some very anachronistic technology in the film. Oh, I like that. Now, the script was written in 1998.

The script was written in 1998 by Greg Hurwitz, who's a mystery writer. Right. He writes crime novels and comic books. He's never written a movie that was made until this. But has like 20 scripts that have been bought at some point. He's one of those guys who seemingly just writes a lot of scripts. Yeah, he just makes a lot of money in Hollywood selling scripts.

He worked on V, the reboot of V. The epic series. The epic lizard alien TV show. But yeah, he's just kind of around. So this script's been kicking around forever. Trevor reads it after Safety Not Guaranteed and goes like, ooh, I like this, I want to make this next. No, he's just kind of around. So this script's been kicking around forever. Trevorrow reads it after Safety Not Guaranteed and goes like, ooh, I like this. I want to make this next. No, he was given it

to be clear. The studio decided he would be a good fit after Safety Not Guaranteed for this script that was like this script they had. He reads it and he likes it. And then Brad Bird recommends him and then he gets Throne Jurassic World and then he makes thrown jurassic world and then he makes

that and now he has like full cachet and he could do whatever he wants and he's like you know what i'm doing i'm going back to the book baby uh let me try i actually have some like like an interview with greg hurwitz who went to harvard okay so this interview was in Harvard's alumni magazine. Great. He wrote it 18 years ago. It felt like this pure, rare thing where I thought of a single mom and two kids and an impossible

predicament. And Henry's voice, the protagonist of the film, came very naturally to me. He'd already sold a novel, but this was his first screenplay. It was optioned by a producer called Jeanette Kahn. Have you heard of her, Griffin? No, I mean, just you reading that quote from him

made me physically angry. And she saw Safety Not Guaranteed. Can you give flashbacks to this movie? She saw Safety Not Guaranteed, offers this script to Colin Trevorrow, and listen to this. Colin meets with Greg Hurwitz and says to Greg Hurwitz,

listen, there's only one way I wouldn't do this movie. I had a meeting with Spielberg about doing the next Jurassic movie, but there's no way that would ever happen with me coming off such a tiny movie, so let's not worry about it. And then a few weeks later, he calls Greg Hurwitz and is like,

so I got Jurassic. But then he went back to Book of Henry. And he says in this convo, maybe I'll be able to do it and then come back and we can make it. But at the same time, he's saying, look, obviously someone else wants to make the movie. I'm not going to Bigfoot you on this. But he had all the power he wanted after Jurassic World. For sure. And it led to him getting hired to make Star Wars.

It wasn't like he was like, he'd signed a deal and it's like, you owe me a book of Henry before you go make a Star War, you know. He had what was, at that point in time, the biggest opening weekend in history. And the film ended up as the number three movie domestically until it was knocked down a peg by Force Awakens.

Fine, but it was a huge hit. Humongous. So he could have done anything he wanted. And he said, I want to go back to Book of Henry. It's burning a hole in my pocket. I've got to make this movie. Now, to be clear, this was announced in March 2015. I've done my research here. So before Jurassic World came out,

it's announced in the Hollywood Reporter, Book of Henry. That's his next project. Of course he could have leapt off of it, but I think he shot this like a while ago. He shot it right the fall after Jurassic World. He shot it in September 2015, right after Jurassic World, and it was supposed to come out September of last year in an Oscar play.

Focus then pushes it to summer 2017. Weird move for a little $10 million family dramedy, like not really an obvious, especially opening. You're leaving like seven genres off of that list. Fine. But as you sell the movie. Sure. And especially weird to open it against Cars 3,

which is like one of the surefire family hits of the year. After this moment, everything will change. So that's the production of the Book of Henry. But he makes it. He casts Naomi Watts, Academy Award nominee. Jacob Tremblay, hot off of room. Hot off of being in a room.

You got Jaden Lieberher. How do you say his name? Lieberher? I don't know. An actor I like a lot. He's in Aloha. He's in Midnight Special. He's in St. Vincent

and is the star of the upcoming It remake. Right. He had actually worked with Naomi Watts on St. Vincent. Correct. Which is remake. Right, he had actually worked with Naomi Watts on St. Vincent. Correct.

Which is nice. And then he got Dean Norris as the villain of the piece. Sarah Silverman, Lee Pace, Bobby Moynihan. Well, this is the thing, because I only knew about the four we first mentioned. Sarah Silverman shows up, and Emily and I go like, what, what, what the fuck? Bobby Moynihan, we're like, wait, wait, he's in it?

And then, yeah, Lee Pace, I don't know if Emily reacted to Lee Pace, but I was like, really, Lee the fuck? Bobby Moynihan, we're like, wait, wait, he's in it? And then, yeah, Lee Pace. I don't know if Emily reacted to Lee Pace, but I was like, really? Lee Pace? Okay. And fucking Tanya Pinkins,

who plays the principal, who's a really good actress. A Steve Broadway actress. She's a fucking Tony nominee. I saw her. I've seen her on stage in like Carolina or Change on the British state. Like, she's the best.

And Maddie Ziegler of Dance Moms and Sia music videos. That's right, yes. Little Maddie Ziegler, who I've never heard of, but I've been told is a YouTube star. She is. She's in the Sia videos. Sia videos, Chandelier. She's a dancer.

She has not really acted before in any substantial way. Ben, how much time do we have left? You have 50 minutes. Doing great. Yeah, 52 minutes. Okay, we got to get moving on the plot, okay? So Twinkly, I always mispronounce his name. Michael Giacchino.

Michael Giacchino. Michael Giacchino. Terrible score by him. Although, I mean, certainly poorly matched to the film. Feels like he was told to emulate a certain kind of score. Definitely, but it's, come on, you have to admit, as much as I love the guy, it's a certain kind of score. Definitely, but it's, come on, you have to admit, as much as I love the guy, it's a really horrendous score. I kept thinking,

oh, what a bad score, and then when I saw it was him, I was surprised. But I think mismatch is the key word. Fine, but I'm holding him responsible. Sure. I hold everyone responsible. Everyone in this film should be held responsible for work. You hear that, editor Kevin Stitt? Okay, so the movie starts, and we're introduced to...

Henry Carpenter. What a fucking piece of shit this kid is. This little twerp. All right, he's played by Jaden Lieberher. He's 11 years old. He's the smartest person who's ever lived, apparently. He's like a savant. Okay.

In every aspect of being a person. Yeah, because it's like... He's kind of like the Glass family kind of thing. Beyond that. He talks like a robot man. They do the thing which I fucking hate, by the way. One of my least favorite tropes. I'm already getting worked up about this movie.

I know. Once we get into the plot, we're going to fucking fly off the handle. Which is that thing where it's like, you know. Ben's adjusting the levels. We're hulking out. Something normal happens like the mom says something reassuring. And he's, I mean, this doesn't happen in the movie. But, you know, this kind of trope where he immediately, like, almost turns to the audience and breaks the fourth wall.

And he's like, okay, mom, like, I understand that, you know, we're. Right. The thing they do instead, it's show and tell. Right. They're giving presentations about, like, their career. Oh, the opening of the movie is, it's like, and for our next presentation, Jimmy, and he gets up with a piece of paper. He's like, I want to be a milkman. Dumb fucking kid missing teeth or whatever.

You're like, girl, I will. And she was like, okay. Some poorly structured sentences there. No, she's just a little basic. Right, right. Who the fuck's this teacher? Who's this fucking teacher who hates her students? And then she's like, Henry, get up here.

And Henry gets up. He doesn't have a piece of paper. Ooh, this kid memorized. Or he's like, Henry, get up here. And Henry gets up. He doesn't have a piece of paper. Oh, this kid memorized. Or he's going off the dome. He is. And he gives a speech about how, like, fucking humanity is pointless and life is a charade. Yeah, he's like, well, what is wanting something if not just, like, a way to confront the existential despair we all face? But, hey, I guess there's that.

You know, whatever. And immediately you're like, I hope this movie is an hour and a half of this. Shit slapped out of him. Fucking asshole. Henry. You want to see this kid stuffed in a rocker. He sucks. I'm so anti-bullying,

but you're like, who's this fucking kid? Anytime anyone says anything to him in the movie. He gives this honestly unprepared presentation. And this is an actor I like a lot. I think he's one of the best actors of his age range. He's okay. I mean, he's fine. But this character is so unbearable. Then his teacher comes up to him and is like,

oh, Henry, why can't we put you in a gifted and talented program again? I told you before, because social psychological... Because it's good for my social development to be in a mixed age group, a mixed intelligence group. But every line of this film feels like the writer wrote it in the most obvious way

to say that sentence and then took out a thesaurus and then replaced each word. Or no, really just like cracked out like Dr. Spock and like just copy pasted like some bit

on child development. And then later when it's about, he's talking about the stock market, you do the same thing with fucking what they don't teach you

in Harvard Business School. Right, right. Because like any fucking moment, I've never been prouder to not have gone to Harvard than I am now knowing that Greg Horowitz went to Harvard. Every moment in the movie is like Naomi Watts will say like, I love you, sweetie.

And he's like, ah, banal reassurances of loving platitudes are a way to dull our minds from the existential. And you're just like, fucking just take it. He always has to like explain how what everyone else is doing is like a veneer.

That's what's so annoying. That's what I'm saying I fucking hate. I hate that trope. So he's this annoying kid. Fucking sucks. Fuck this kid. He has a little brother called Peter, played by Jacob Tremblay, who's like a cute kid with glasses. More of a lip-nicky. His character is he's cute and he's got glasses. Yeah, he's a a cute kid with glasses. Oversized glasses. Yeah. And that is his character. More of a lip nicky, would you say. His character is he's cute

and he's got glasses. Yeah, he's a cute little kid. He's not a super freak, intelligent kid. Normal kid. Normal kid. And then he's got a mom, Susan,

who's a waitress played by Naomi Watts. Single mother. Waitress to the local diner, single mother, with some kind of rough edges. She's not an alcoholic, but a bit of a lush.

She's kind of a weird parent. She plays video games all the time. She loves playing video games. Sometimes she's characterized. She's got a lot of bits. Sometimes she's got a lot of business. Sometimes she's characterized like Robin Williams and Jack, where you're like, is the point here that she's developmentally disabled?

Because there's some I Am Sam shit where it's like, she's on the couch playing video games. Whose seltzer is this? I think Amy Nicholson's. Okay, I'll drink it. We just recorded an episode with Amy Nicholson. It's your seltzer? Yeah, it's mine. Thank you. Okay, but spoiler, Amy Nicholson's on an upcoming episode.

Also, Jack Nicholson was on the episode. Yeah, of course. Bring your daughter to podcasting. Hey, Amy, I can't do it. David is holding his eyebrows up. Hey, Amy. No, I can't do it. For the listener at home, David is holding his eyebrows up. Hey, Amy. No, I can't do it. I wish I could do it. David, enough with the fun bits. We have to go back to being angry. Okay.

There's a moment where he is going over their bills. Oh, I just want to say, right, the idea is he's the man of the house. You know, he runs the household. And that's maybe why she's this sort of arrested development type. Because she has this super genius kid. Even though he though he's 11 like what's he been running the stock market to do with six that's the point fuck is this at what point did the mom check out and go like oh i don't need to

be an adult because my kid's an adult how does he afford this nice house three was it at nine she's a waitress yeah and then at some point later in the film they established that she has 780 thousand dollars in a bank account 680 thousand okay,000. Okay. I made it clear. She has almost $700,000. Yeah, she's got $650,000 or whatever in a bank account because this kid plays the stock market like crazy. And there's all these bits where he's like, Mom, you really should get a new car.

And she's like, the old car works fine. And they all say it in unison. Like it's a fun fucking thing that they all say. Like it's a running joke. The old car works fine. Oh, yes, that specific thing only our mom says. All right, but of her mantras. Like it's a running joke. The old car works fine. Oh yes, that specific thing only our mom says. Alright, but what did you want to say about Naomi Watts?

He's like there with like little glasses down at the bottom of the bridge of his nose. And he's got like seven newspapers and bills and he's like, Mom, where's the FICA score and this and that? And Mom's like, Oh, Henry, I'm trying to play my video game. She's playing Gears of War. And she's like feet up on the couch playing Xbox. Okay, I see what's going on video game. She's playing Gears of War. And she's like feet up on the couch playing Xbox.

Okay, I see what's going on. It's like a role reversal. Whoa! Right? And he's like, you really shouldn't lean into it because she's doing the thing when you play video games, you know, where you kind of lean into the controller. And she's like, no, see, it totally works. It's literally like she's a 10-year-old.

Mother, you realize that leaning into a video game screen doesn't do anything, right? Right, it's literally, that's the dynamic here. That's the dynamic. It's fucking Oedipal weird shit. Right, because it also feels a little sexual. Like it never crosses a line. No, it doesn't. But it's weird saying I don't need a husband. I have Henry. Yes. And like any time anything happens or she's like, well, I have to check with Henry first. And no one explicitly sits her down and says your relationship with your son's really weird. I mean, people kind of like hint at it. Sarah Silverman kind of makes fun of it. Sarah Silverman in this movie is styled exactly like Amy Winehouse. She has the tattoos on the boobs. She has the beehive hairdo

and the eyeliner. She's the drunk, dangerous drunk. She's a full stop dangerous level alcoholic. She has bottles of wine in her bra. She's constantly wasted. They find her passed out on park benches. On some wicker furniture yeah

right like outdoors shit and um she's like why don't you just go get a man and she's like find me one man out there who is half as responsible mature and intelligent as henry and it's like don't you want to get you know don't want to get some of that dick have some sex a little bit of sex do what you want get that dick like his dad? Have some sex. Have a little bit of sex. Do what you want. Get that dick. Like, his dad's out of the picture. We don't even, I forget why. Never explain.

He's just an asshole. He's just gone. Oh, remember, now that my husband left me with the two kids, they just, like, invoke him once. You have no idea who the fuck he is, what happened. She seems pretty high functioning. She doesn't seem, like, totally burnt up. Naomi Watts, you mean? Yeah.

Yeah, no, she's fine. Like, she's immature, but she doesn't feel broken. She doesn't feel, no, she's fine. She's immature, but she doesn't feel broken. She doesn't feel sad. There's a world where she's kind of like Toni Collette in... About a Boy or Sixth Sense. Sixth Sense, where it's like, yeah, oh, I get it. Yeah, this mom's a little weird and a little unconventional, but she's a good mom at the heart of it.

But I would say this movie does not succeed in that portrayal. And two points. For the movie to work, the Naomi Watts character, look, there's a thousand reasons the movie doesn't work. Yeah. But for that plot line to actually kind of track,

the Naomi Watts character has to be more of a disaster a la the Sarah Silverman character where you're like, oh man, she really can't keep herself up. Whereas with the way the Naomi Watts character is characterized, you're just constantly like,

is she just choosing not to take on any responsibility because she's lazy? Right. Like she's just trying to like force herself into adolescence. It feels like Naomi Watts is playing a child in an SNL sketch. Yeah, sure. Where you're like, well this is non

literal representational sketch comedy and she's doing a good job of like affecting the mannerisms of a small child. Like a little boy playing video games on the couch. It all feels a little forced as does everything in this movie. Okay, so that's this movie, right? That's the initial relationship that's set up.

And then the other thing is that Henry is this weird creative genius where he makes these fucking Rube Goldberg machines around the house. They have this steampunk tree house in the woods that he and his little brother go to. The door is made out of a fridge, but it's the perfect section of a fridge,

and the roof is an upside-down tugboat, and the fucking, like, you know, the staircase is like bones or whatever. It's a bunch of bones that are garbage. Exactly. It's all, like, found art, beautiful, like, Brooklyn artisanal art festival. I like the sound of a bone stair. Yeah, that's what you made that part up. I made that part up.

But the door is a fridge. Cool. And it's like they go in there, and here's one of the that part up. I made that part up. But the door is a fridge. Cool. And it's like, they go in there and here's one of the many zillion problems I have in this movie. It's like, they go into this wonderland. What do they do? Henry doesn't really do anything. No. He starts like scribbling like

fucking equations on a chalkboard or something. Meanwhile, he has a Rube Goldberg machine that you like activate all these pool balls, you know, and and they suck a puppet's dick. And then all it does is it squirts icing onto a cupcake. Yeah. Too much business.

Just squirt the icing on the cupcake. That's an easy task. I don't know. Have a cooler Rube Goldberg machine. Have it do something. It's like the world's worst juicero machine. I guess the whole point of Rube Goldberg machines is they do a simple thing complicated, so maybe I'm nitpicking. But it just doesn't feel as wondrous as he wants you to feel it.

And this movie's laying down the wondrous, between the music and the shots. Yeah, there's tinkly music. Right. It wants you to be so thoroughly drowned by everything that's happening. And Henry's bedroom is covered with blueprints of airplanes as the wallpaper. is covered with blueprints of airplanes as the wallpaper. That's not what they made, but it's the most beautifully designed children's wonderland bedroom.

And he's got this old-timey aviator helmet and all these gidgets and whiz-mo's. Fuck it, you know? And so there's a scene where Peter is getting picked on by older kids, and he got like a bronze metal around his fucking shit yeah it's because he got a metal like henry got a metal that was like smartest little shithead that ever lived metal he gave it to peter because he's a good big brother and he's like non-material he's like oh metals are simply like metallic forms of fire currency to boost our

confidence and you're like meaningless existential items and And you're like, meaningless existential items. And so he's like, yeah, Peter can have it. Naomi Watts is like, okay, Peter can have it. Peter goes to school immediately. They're like, fuck you, Peter. You asshole. They push him on the ground. You think you can have a fucking medal?

They push him on the ground, and the medal breaks in half in a way that a medal would not. It's true. It breaks as if it was made out of- Well, maybe it was a poorly made medal. Maybe. But yeah, and Peter is angry because Henry was distracted from defending him.

Henry's like 80 pounds soaking wet. This kid's not gonna defend anyone. There's like three years age difference between the two of them. Swear to God. This is like the least physically active kid. And he gets home and Peter is inconsolable. He cannot get over this broken metal.

So Henry is like, I know how to make you feel better. And Henry sets up a fucking rotating fan and gets a bunch of like confetti or soap flakes or fucking something. I forgot about this. But this is important. Yeah, it is important. Okay. And then he puts on that dumb little helmet with the goggles. Yeah, do you see that?

And he gets some, which is the poster image. This is the only moment where the helmet comes into play. He doesn't ever use it again. No. It's just sitting on their mantle as another piece of like fucking art direction. Yeah, right. Because there's too much business going on in their bedroom. There's a lot of business in their bedroom.

So he sets up. Look, it's like my bedroom, but when I was 17 years old. Right. It's like my bedroom now. Except everything's there because I like it, not because some fucking person thought it would look fun anyway uh sorry he he sets up the stupid okay so he sets up the fucking soap flakes and the fan and he pours it so that like the door frame is like this and peter's on the bed and henry's out in the hallway and all he can see from the door frame is like now this like snow blowing it looks like snow is blowing by sideways.

Do you get what I'm saying? It's like the old Adam West Batman where he'd climb up the wall, but it was clearly filmed. Like they just tilted the camera to plungers. And he's like pretending to climb up a mountain. So he's on the floor on his belly, pretend to climb up Mount Everest. Like there's snow coming down and Peter loves this.

He thinks it's so cute. And you're just like, what the fuck is this movie? You're kind of like, okay, I have no idea where this is going. The first 45 minutes of the movie is all this kind of business. It's mostly just sort of whimsical shit with one...

I'd say less. It's like 30. It's pretty compact. Because the whole movie is like 90 and out. No, the movie is an hour 45. Really? Yeah. It's the first 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure about it. Because 45 minutes in is when something happens. But before we get to that but the whole

movie like henry is telling everyone that everything they do is like stupid human business they do to placate themselves in the meaningless but he does it too he does the most meaningless like dumb frivolous because he loves his brother you monster but you're like that's the thing that will make your brother happy the other thing i want to know before we get to the serious thing loves it by the way is that naomi watts when's putting them to bed like takes out a ukulele and plays a song which is god awful. The worst. Oh boy. And that was the opening line of your review.

Can you quote the opening line? Yes like the movie Lost Me. I can probably find it. But this is the oscillation between the movie where it's like okay sometimes for comedic effect Naomi Watts seems totally checked out as a mom. It's like a child. They're parenting her. That's the joke. And he's like, stop playing video games. And she's like, oh, come on.

Why are you so boring? Mom! And then sometimes when she's putting them to bed, she's like the most attentive, empathetic, observant mother in the world. And they just want to play up these scenes that feel like, oh, this is what I felt when your mommy loved you. She tucks them to bed. She calls them Tamale 1, Tamale 2. I know, Enchilada 1, Enchilada 2. I'm sorry. Will Goss wanted us to checkale one, tamale two. I know, enchilada one, enchilada two.

Will Goss wanted us to check, wanted to check which one of us is enchilada one and which one of us is enchilada two. I'm enchilada two. I'm Peter, you're Henry, right? Fair enough. The exact moment the Book of Henry lost me. Right, because I'm meek and you're really smart

and you know everything. Well said. Thank you. The exact moment the Book of Henry lost me was when Naomi Watts reached for the ukulele. That's my first line. It happens 21 minutes in. Now, the other thing that's going on is that Henry...

Yeah, she sings this original song that was written for the movie, and then Stevie Nicks does a cover of the song in the end credits. That is true. That's their Oscar Best Original Song play. Yeah, it's gonna win. So, next door to the Carpenter family...

Oh, no, I forgot. How did you forget? Because I was so focused. This is the fucking movie. I know, I was so focused on this bullshit. Next door to the Carpenter family is the Sickleman family. Okay. Oh, they sound nice. Yes, Sickleman.

Played by Dean Norris as Glenn, the patriarch, who is the stepfather to Maddie Ziegler's character, Christina, who's an 11-year-old girl in Henry's class. And I would describe Dean Norris' performance as what if Hank from Breaking Bad had no redeeming qualities whatsoever

and no dimensionality? It's basically like, you know, like, I can imagine, here's how I did it, if I'm directing it, to get this exact performance. I go up to Dean and I'm like, you know your under the dome character? Like worse.

You want to do that worse? Because basically he just sort of grumbles. There's no shades of gray in this character. This guy is just. His first introduction is like,

he's like, Susan. And she's like, yeah, what's up Mr. Fickleman? Clench T. Mr. Sickle. Sickle. Your leaves are blowing

into my yard. I have to rake yourle. Your leaves are blowing into my yard. I have to rake your leaves. But he's not even like yelling. He's just kind of like an asshole. He's just kind of like a little asshole. You start out thinking he's an asshole and then the movie slowly reveals to you that he is the worst human being who's ever.

All right, so basically he's, and then she, you know, just to get some exposition out, it's like, you know, she says something to Maddie, to Maddie Ziegler, to Christina like, oh, you know, just to get some exposition out, it's like, you know, she says something to Maddie, to Maddie Ziegler, to Christina, like, oh, you know, you and your father. And she's like, stepfather.

In one of five lines this character has. She doesn't say anything. It's true. And the idea is obviously she's very shut down. The film makes no effort. It's styled like Violet Incredible. She's got the hair hanging down over one side of her face. You can only see one eye.

She's kind of slouchy. And she doesn't talk much because why? Her stepfather is abusing her. Sexually. I think. They actually never say it. They never say it. It's a PG-13 movie.

I think it has to be. He's doing it with the curtains open. So this is why this is knowledge because Henry's watching from next door through his bedroom window. Totally adjacent windows. Right. She's sitting in her room looking very despondent and you're like he's looking down and then on the ground floor you see him

like the stepdad sitting there like drinking his whiskey. She's on the top floor like brushing a Barbie doll's hair. He's on the bottom floor like drinking whiskey and growling and then he follows him up to the bedroom and then he'll just cut to Henry's reaction the bottom floor like drinking whiskey and growling and then he follows him up to the bedroom and then i'll just cut to henry's reaction it's like a fucking like educational video about like detecting child abuse it's like make sure like like like watch for signs and it's like the most sort of like basic um undramatic on uh you know lack of nuance, whatever.

Yeah, it's very didactic. It's just like, he is abusing her. FYI, like, important for later story. Now, in this scene where she is introduced and he yells about, or grumbles about the leaves, it's also set up, Naomi Watts is so happy to see her. They have a secret handshake, like a very complicated hand trap secret handshake.

Yeah, they're like, hey, what's up? Catch you on the flip side, homeboy! Apparently Naomi Watts and this girl next door- She's so fucking annoying. Are best friends. And then when they walk away, Naomi Watts is like, so when are you going to make her my daughter-in-law to Henry? And just keeps on talking about how Henry's going to date this girl. Right.

And so you think they're setting up something where, like, okay, they have a weird flirtation, but then they never talk the entire movie because this girl's not a character. She's not a character. But the entire movie being about her, they never make her a human being. Excuse me. Until the end. We'll get to that, though. Yeah, there better be a reason why they're having a character be put through this.

Oh, no, you'll see. Oh, no, no, you'll see. Oh, you'll see. 45 minutes into the movie, or so. Oh, you'll see. Oh, no, no, you'll see. Oh, you'll see. Oh, Ben. Oh, I'm not going to see it. Oh, Ben, you'll see. 45 minutes into the movie or so. Well, after there's the first night where you see him on screen observe the abuse, right? And then the next day he goes into school and there's a test. Talks to the principal.

Well, he's sitting there and she's like at the cafeteria. She's totally out of it. She's not eating her food. He knows his bruises on her. And he goes to the principal and he's like, I've told you once. I told you a thousand times. All the signs are there. Bruises.

Her grades have declined. Lack of appetite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the principal's like, Henry, you're a child. You have no evidence. I can't go off of this. Right. The principal's basically saying, I can't make a basis accusation.

And the other thing is, he's the police commissioner. So it's hard to accuse him of a crime. The beloved police commissioner is abusing his stepdaughter, but no one will believe him. And in this movie, the only person who has power to actually take the police commissioner down is the principal, if she chooses to. I guess so, but there's... Seemingly, because she's... Well, okay, let me just get this out, and then we've got to get to the first twist. Henry does call Child Protective Services.

Takes a pamphlet out of her office, dials the number on the back. And then watches as this Child Protective Services officer goes to the house, talks to Hank. I mean, he's not called Hank in this movie, Glenn.

And he's kind of thinking... Glenn, hey, sorry, I don't know what's going on here. And I'm on the shoulder, hey, I just gotta talk to her. You know, I gotta check. It's all kind of wordless because he's watching

and then Henry turns over the pamphlet and the head of child protective services is like jim sickleman or whatever you know his brother he's he's wired the whole town for child molesting but the movie's setting up this thing the stupidest thing in the world where it's like this this goes straight to the top this one thing where he just abuses one person. He's, oh, he has people installed in every position of power. This movie's weirdly anti-bureaucracy even though it's not making any larger point

because Henry's like, the principal won't listen. The police commissioner's in on it. His brother's Child Protective Service Agency. No one will listen to me. I think the idea, if you're gonna do this movie well, or if this script would be possibly good, it's not a bad script. It's a bad script.

The idea is Henry, who is so smart and can work the stock market, yada yada, but he's being confronted with this more complex human problem and these human failings, and he's like, I can't do anything about this. Why can't I fix this? I can fix anything else. This is a movie about a child trying to figure out how to deal with a world that doesn't exist in absolutes. That isn't hard numbers.

Now, there's a way to do that. Finesse. Yes. But here's what happens. At that moment when these pieces are on the board and you think that's the movie that should be made. Sure. Henry out of nowhere gets a tumor. He gets brain cancer.

They do that? Yeah. They have a montage where they play that song. Yeah, they play that song. And Scottie Pippen comes onto the court. Bloody diva. Come on and slam. Welcome to the jam. The Monstars.

He like, he collapses from headaches. He goes to the hospital. She wakes up to hear Jacob trembling, screaming. And he's convulsing on the floor. And they go to the hospital. I fucking hate this scene.

They immediately perform brain surgery on him. They go to the hospital. They're like, we gotta perform right away. Well, Lee Pace is like, have you been having headaches? And he's like, yeah, for a few months now. And Lee Pace is like, this kid has a major tumor. It's on his brain. We need to take it out. And Henry, like, corrects him.

He's like, well, I thought it was just this and that. No, no, no, no, no, no. That happens after the surgery. Lee Pace comes in. Henry's head's all bandaged up. That's, you know, he had brain surgery because of the bandage on his head. Okay. And he's like.

A little tip. Filmmaking tip for you. To convey brain surgery, put a bandage on someone's head he's like hey sport slugger yeah how you doing you see the thing is there's a nasty thing in your head and he's like a bully in your body right and henry's like give it to me straight doctor what are we talking about and the doctor's like oh rather than going like hey what's the deal with you knowing about advanced brain doctoring? Right.

He's like, oh, do you want to take a look at your MRI? And Henry's like, oh, yeah, there it is. You know, third frontal lobe. Like, it's fucking stupid. I don't care how smart you are. You don't know neurosurgery. It's everything. He went to school for four years for this shit.

And he went to school for four years for this shit. And Henry essentially says, like, well, I assumed it was this kind of cancer, so I probably have eight years to live. Oh, I misdiagnosed myself. Oops. I only have two days to live. And he's like, wait, misdiagnosed? How did you know you had this? Because in the movie, when he's convulsing, they all act like this has never happened before. Up until that point, he's just had a couple headaches, and he somehow self-diagnoses

himself with some kind of brain tumor. At first, he's like, well, first I thought it was just stress. Right. And you're like, how smart are you supposed to be? Because you're smart enough that you know the particulars of brain tumors. Right. And how to read an MRI, but you're also stupid enough that you have three months of blurred vision. You think it might just be stress?

You're 11! How stressed out are you? So Lee Pace is the handsome doctor. God, I'm yelling so much. Dr. Ronan the Accuser. Yeah, Dr. David Daniels. He's pretty good in the movie. He's a good actor. Yeah, good actor.

Anyway, so... He essentially tells him, you got less than a week to live. The middle... You're dying now. The middle 20, 25 minutes of the movie is Henry dies. Yeah, I feel like there's a few scenes

because there's this scene where Sarah Silverman comes in, and they do their famous bit where she calls him Hank, which is their famous bit where she's like, Hank, and he's like, it's Henry, you dumb bitch. And then he calls her a whore and a slut and a bunch of big thesaurus words, like $10 words. It's fucking nuts, the hostility these two.

Almost like he's jealous of her. Okay, so he just keeps on making jokes about her being like a loose, promiscuous woman and a drunk. And she calls him Hank and just is sort of like backhanded diminutive to him. Yeah. And then she comes in to visit him by himself when no one else is in the room.

And he's like, oh, I see. Now it's the moment in the movie where we do this. Like he explains what's happening. He's like, this is page 75 of the screenplay. Because you feel bad about me now and you feel bad about how you've you know but he also says like look i know we've always had a contentious relationship to say the least but i'll be honest it was a coping mechanism for me to shield my libidus interest and like what he says in dumb henry speak is like i always made fun of you because i thought you were pretty and then he translates it like he says that yeah because, what I'm trying to say is.

And then the movie cuts away from the scene and nothing else happens. Nope. Sarah Silverman kisses him. On the mouth. And then they see Music Factory come back in. Oh, they bring him back in. That's fun. Bloody D-back.

And then the movie. The movie acts like the love that could have been if Henry had not died. He could have married this 42-year-old diner waitress. It's like the ending of Blank Check except 10 times worse. It is, but she does kiss him on the mouth, and it is weird. Right. And then he dies in his mother's arms saying, I want to see the sky. But they find him on the floor of the room, and they're like, what are you doing on the floor out of your bed here? And he saying, I want to see the sky. But they find him on the floor of the room and they're like, what are you doing on the floor out of your bed here?

And he said, I want to see the sky. So the movie is about the sky. Yeah, of course it is. It should be known the movie is about the sky. But they find him on the floor and he dies in her arms. And then the movie ends and that's the end of the movie. Are you serious? No, absolutely not.

There's like a whole third act. You have no idea what the fuck happens next. Then the book of Henry is opened. He says to Peter, Peter's in his room one day and he's do you want a brownie? No. Do you want this? No. He doesn't want food because food is a mere lie that humans tell themselves. Henry's a breatharian. He only absorbs light.

I'm joking. That's not true. So few of what we're saying is a bit. You don't know. Yeah, right. That's the thing. Everything is plausible. Most of this is in the movie, not everything. Okay, so he says to Peter, he's like, Peter, you gotta do me a favor.

You gotta do me a solid, okay? You're the person I trust most in the world. You have to give her the book of Henry. He doesn't call it the book of Henry. He's like, I got this red notebook with like the fucking Wright Brothers flying machine on the outside. Yeah, exactly. Vitruvian Man 2 or whatever.

And you have to give her the red book. Don't read it, Peter. Right, right. But mom must read it. Okay, so he dies. In her arms. They're sad. How do you show that they're sad?

Here's a shot of Peter standing in the middle of a busy street with his head down Charlie Brown walking as leaves fall around him and sad music plays. That's true. That's a shot that you have. She's kind of in a daze. At one point, she's like, listen, Peter, I decided, look, I know I've been a little out of it because my son just died in my arms, but dessert every meal for the week. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And she's got a bowl, and it's chocolate syrup, and she's pouring Jolly Ranchers into it. And there's one kind of cute moment when Jacob Tremblay brings his fucking dessert lunch from his goddamn emotionally retarded mother. I'm sorry for using that word, but she's an idiot. And he's like, does anyone want to trade me for fruit? And all the kids take his dessert

and they give him their fruit. And now he's lousy with fruit. I think that moment's okay. That's fine. Jacob Tremblay's good in this movie. Jacob Tremblay. He's the one who kind of comes out unscathed. Who's kind of doing his thing that he did for Maroon.

But boy, is that thing effective. Yeah, he's a cute kid. He's fine. He's very natural. He's very winning. One of those cute kid actors where you're like, this is going to be rough when he's 13. It's going to be ugly.

Oh, boy. It's going to get ugly. When I was watching the movie, I was thinking about when he won that BFCA award, and he got up, and he said, first, I want to thank the broadcast film critics, and the camera cuts to Gina Rodriguez, like, literally going like,

like, at the, like, absolute, like, you know, perfect poise of this kid. It's so cute. I just want to, like, you know, like, meet Jacob Tremblay and be like, look, kid, I used to be pretty cute, too. Like, people used to be pretty trim by my face. Look at what we got right now.

Boy, oh boy. No one wants a piece of this. Let me tell you. Man, I can get arrested in this town. BFCA more like no F you. I used to be a regular Jacob Tremblay. I was the Jacob Tremblay of Greenwich Village. God, that sounds like a great movie.

All right. So they're sad. So Jacob Tremblay decides to crack open the book, that sounds like a great movie. Alright, so they're sad. So Jacob Tremblay decides to crack open the book of Henry. Well, you're missing two things. What? Because there's one moment here that I think is emblematic of a certain type of terrible screenwriting. Where's your phone? Where are we at right now? Oh, boy.

23 minutes! Okay, 23 minutes left or 23 minutes left? 23 minutes left. Okay, there's a moment here that I think is emblematic of something this screenplay does really, really poorly. Okay? They're making the dessert breakfast, right? And these are the two moments I want spotlight. What?

Ding dong. Go to the door. Who is it? Oh, it's Dr. Ronan the Accuser. And his first line is, oh hey, I'm sorry. I know we had said 4.30, but I was in the neighborhood, decided to stop by a little earlier. And she goes, oh, okay.

And then he goes, you know, I don't usually make house calls, but I just felt the need to check in on you and Peter, so I thought I'd stop by and do that. We get it. He making a fucking house call. Right, but if he says, hey, I know we agreed on 4.30,

but I got here a little earlier, she knows what the deal is. He called her up and said, hey, you know, I don't usually make... No, he has to explain it because the audience doesn't understand. Okay, so the movie has no faith in the audience and the other one like that is she goes back to work at the diner and Bobby Moynihan, who's her boss, is like, hey, you think you came back a little too soon? Yeah, because she like, you know, someone asked

for a milkshake and she like, you know, puts bacon on his head or whatever. And she takes like, hey, is this Diet Coke or Coke? And she drinks the whole thing and she's you know puts bacon on his head or whatever. And she takes like down the whole thing. Hey is this Diet Coke or Coke? And she drinks the whole thing and she's like diet. And then she throws the glass at their head. And C&C Music Factory comes in. And Bobby Moynihan's like

you came back to work too early. And she's like no I'm fine. And he's like look I thought like single mom, run down house, like you needed this job. Find out you live in this crazy mansion with bespoke art direction. You have $680,000 in the bank. You have a steampunk treehouse that's bigger than my apartment. Right.

You don't need this job. Go take some time off. And she's like, no. And he's like, I'm not asking. I'm telling. And she walks out and Sarah Silverman follows her. And in another piece of character business, Sarah Silverman always pretends that she's a billionaire and goes like, yeah, I was going to fly my yacht this weekend, but then my- The jag was in the fucking Concorde.

Fucking whatever. We get it. So she comes out and starts saying that thing. And then she's like, come on, why don't you come hang out? And Naomi Watts is like, I can't. I have to go home to my two children. Yeah, there you go. Do you get it?

Because one of them is dead. Oh, she realized in that moment. Or she's doing a bit. I don't care. Why would she ever say two children? Because she's doing the bit. And I know it's a little detail. She's doing the bit.

No, the bit is that she doesn't remember for a second. Oh, I forgot my son is dead. I'm going to disagree with you. I think the bit is she's doing the bit, but like in a hostile way. Where she's like, because Sarah Silverman's like, I would have been late. You know, I was late, but the jag. And she's like, well, I have to go home to my two children. I saw it as the opposite.

Where she's like, your shit's fake and so is mine because of my dead child. I saw it as she was killing the bit. Yeah. Okay, but either way, and I know this is. What do I think? Who's right? I mean, either way, and I know this is... Tiebreaker? Who's right? I mean, either way, we both lose. Who's right? David, you're right.

Great, thank you. I just wanted to complete the bit. Either way, the cleaner version of that line is, go home to my children because children is plural. But I'm saying to say two is like hat on a hat. Yeah, well, this movie's got a lot of hats. This movie has more hats than I've ever seen.

What about the neighbor who's abusing his daughter? So Peter opens the book of Henry, goes down to see his mother. What does he say to his mother? Mother, I think Henry wants us to kill our neighbor. He goes, I read this book. Henry told me not to. I couldn't really understand most of it. Can you look at this?

And the book is, Henry has outlined in detail how to commit the perfect murder. In the book. Ben, I swear to God. This is what the movie is now about. This is what the movie is about. This is the third act in the movie, which is 14 minutes. This is the second and third act in the movie. It's a lot in the movie's about. This is the third act in the movie, which is... This is the second and third act in the movie. It's a lot in the movie.

And there's an initial fight between little Peter and Susan. I'm not going to murder somebody. No, no, no. Where Peter says, we have to kill Glenn. And she's like, Mr. Sickleman. And he's like, well, Henry, it was his dying wish. We have to kill him. And she's like, Peter, we are not murdering the police commissioner.

And that's final. That's a line in the movie. It's played as a comedy of manners. The joke is how flippant that she's punishing him. Listen to me, mister, we're not murdering anybody. But then she keeps on going, come on, there has to be another way.

And then he turns the page of the book, and the next page says why there is no other way. Shit like that, where the book is fucking anticipating everything the mom was going to say about why she is no other way. Shit like that where the book is fucking anticipating everything the mom was going to say about why she shouldn't do it. And then she's watching from the same place that Henry watched. I'm moving this along, Griffin.

She's watching the child abuse happen. This daughter who's had two lines of dialogue. She's in the bedroom. Curtains open! And she sees him go upstairs and walk into the room close the door, cuss at her shocked face. No! No! Glenn, no! She goes in the other room

to call him. Calls him. So that he'll stop and goes like, hey, I'm just calling to say... This is where me, Emily, and Armand just burst out laughing. I'm calling to say I'm going to your good friend Armand White. She said, I'm gonna... Those leaves. Those leaves. I've been slacking on it, but I'm taking care, I'm on it

now. And he's like, okay. He's like, okay. But what she really means is, I'm gonna murder you. So she decides now that she's gonna murder him. Per the notes. She follows. So she has now decided to murder a human being. Murder her neighbor. Her neighbor. A human being.

That she's known for a while. A sinful and terrible crime. Sure. Without punishment. But Henry is convinced this is the only way to deal with the situation. Because the principal won't listen. Right. He was convinced. He's dead.

And she reads the book. But he left behind an audio tape. The book keeps on telling her. Yeah. One of the things in the book is it says go down to the safe. And he goes down to the safe and there's a mini cassette recorder. Which she will now. Like Fletch.

Yes. A kid in 2015. He left her a tape. Went to eBay and bought like vintage mini cassette tapes. because you know, you can just destroy the tape.

You know, if it was digital. Yeah. Anyway, she buys the tape. Now here's the perfect murder. Just, can I,

no, excuse me. I know it's really complicated. It's really complicated how to execute for a perfect murder. Here's how you do it. You buy a gun, you shoot him in the head.

I swear to God, the movie never explains why it's a perfect murder beyond that. The only thing he really helps his- She's got no cover. She's got no alibi, really. The only thing he helps his mother with is like- How to purchase a gun. How to purchase this gun illicitly off the books, which is essentially by eavesdropping at the gun store, he's found out if you say like, Victor sent me or something like that.

They'll sell you an assault rifle without the a permit or waiting period so it'll be like and then he's like he's gone around town and he's found out if you throw the gun off this bridge into a dam then no one will find it right now he hasn't explained how the cops are going to be like huh this guy got shot in the head the bullet must have come from this steampunk tree house. Like, they're not that fucking stupid. They're not gonna be like, oh, he must have fallen on a bullet. Because the idea is that her two houses are right next to each other, right? And if you went out back behind the houses into the woods,

you would first find that bridge where you're, you know, they call it gun throw bridge where you can throw the gun into the water. And then past on the other side of that bridge is the bespoke treehouse which is a perfect assassination spot. So he outlines how to trick Glenn Sickleman into going into the woods

where she can shoot him from the treehouse then throw the gun over the bridge and never get caught and he keeps on telling her in the book and now on the tape because the tape is narrating like, mom, I know this is gonna crazy, but you have to believe me. But the tape also talks to her in real time where it's like, go to the ATM. There's a $500 limit. Take a left and go to the next ATM.

No, Mom, the other left. Right. And she's like, and she walks off the right way. She'll be like, she's like, only $500. She's like, I know only $500. But if you go to the next ATM, you'll be able to get another $500. She listens to the tape on this cassette recorder with iPod headphones. Yes.

And the tape will say something like, get $500. Then there will be a silence in the tape, enough time for her to out loud say in an outdoors voice, Henry, what are you talking about? Only $500? Mom, I know $500 isn't going to sound like a lot. Like, this kid fucking recorded this tape. We're running out of time, right? What time are we at? You have 15 minutes.

Because we really, because, but yes, it's all bullshit like this. But is there anything else before the actual crime? There's a lot of shoe leather. There's just a lot of her buying the gun, getting the money for the gun. Questioning it. Learning how to shoot. Like, he teaches her via the tape how to fight. This is like a high-powered assault rifle

with fucking hollow point ammunition that's gonna explode on contact. It becomes like wanted shit. Yeah, exactly. She's like bending bullets. And you gotta remember, the tinkly score's still there. The autumnal lensing.

All the crap's still there. The Amblin patina. But at the same time, she's got this fucking black dick of a gun. And she's getting ready to shoot him. Okay, so here are other things that are happening in the movie. Even though Peter read the book and brought it to her and said,

I don't understand all of it. What's Mr. Sickleman doing to Madeline? And she goes, something bad. I don't want to tell you about it. It's not Madeline. It's Christina. Sorry. She then tells Peter that she's not going to murder Glenn Sickleman and then goes ahead planning to murder him

and Peter seems completely oblivious to what's going on. Yeah, he's not involved. I guess she doesn't want to make him an accessory. Even though he knows already because he's read the book. Look, I don't fucking know. But the other thing that's going on here is it kind is they start hitting these strings of like, when's the time for you to grow up and become a mother? Like, Henry was being the parent,

now you gotta be the parent. And she keeps on saying, my priority is I need to be a good mother for Peter, which is why she's going to commit a crime that could lead to her getting put in jail, leaving Peter with no family whatsoever. But it's also like it's like it's this whole thing where she let him boss her around for so long so she's letting her boss

she's letting him boss her around from the afterlife but in the tape like henry keeps on saying stuff like mom if you mess up on one detail they'll catch you and it's like hey guess what if the stakes are this high don't do it double down on the one kid you got call the cops fucking call the cops and be like no for serious i'm, I'm a grown person. This man is committing abuse. Well, because the justification is right, because they called the child services and it's the brother. Well, then

just get someone else. Or film it if it's so up. Send a camera! The curtain's open! Just send him a fucking camera! You can buy him! They're like nest cameras now You can get them for 300 bucks I'm not one of these fucking CinemaSins guys

Who likes to look there and go like Well Juno could have just gotten an abortion I agree You don't want to be like Fuck that But this movie is asking you to believe That a mother would choose to follow the advice Of her dead 11 year old son

And commit a murder Because there is no other option Even though their window is completely equidistant the advice of her den 11 year old son and commit a murder because there is no other option even though their window is completely equidistant perfect view of where this abuse is always happening with curtains open take a fucking picture they can't deny it

but they don't do this there's no other choice turn to the next page in the book why there's no other choice but to murder she takes the two kids Christina the abuse victim and Peter well she goes to Dean Norris and she says do you. Here's what happens. She takes the two kids, Christina, the abuse victim, and Peter. Well, she goes to Dean Norris, and she says, do you have a will? What happens if you die? Yeah. Because

your wife is gone. In this very terse conversation. It's very weird, and you can't figure out if they're implying that he killed the wife, or what happened to the wife. And he's like, no, haven't thought about it. She fakes his will, or Henry has faked his will. She signs it. She gets a form from him saying that she can bring Christina to the talent show.

So she gets his signature, forges the will that says Christina will live with her if he dies. Files that will. Christina has one line in that scene where she comes downstairs and she goes, How's school, honey? And he goes, Math is tough. Math is hard. So Christina's had three lines of dialogue at this point in the movie. Committing murder to save her.

You know, she's a total prop. It's terrible. And so, here's what Naomi Watts does to commit the perfect murder. Takes these kids to the talent show. Leaves the talent show immediately. Drives back home where Dean Norris is just at home. Why couldn't he take the kids to the talent show? He's not doing anything.

Because she gave him the form that said that he was going take the kids to the talent show? He's not doing anything. Because she gave him the form that said that he was going to take her to the talent show. Lures him out into the woods to shoot him. With a tape recorder, so he follows a noise. What's that noise out there? Oh, it's Henry's tape recorder. Lures him out into the woods. She's got her gun trained on him.

Then she accidentally knocks over something to start another Rube Goldberg machine. He has set up. I mean, this is the moment that is just patently ludicrous. So on the tape, he says, Mom, it is very important that you do not make a wrong move. Do not make any noise. Yeah, and immediately she like farts and like, you know. The Rube Goldberg machine goes off.

And the Rube Goldberg machine is like a three-minute cycle. It's like a pool ball that goes down three racks. Right, right. And like a donkey kicks a fucking guava. Yeah, exactly. A game of Mario Golf is played. And then finally, like all this just to

make some Polaroids. But for three minutes, this is going on in the background. She's there. You're seeing her through the lens of the sniper rifle. Dean Norris is just standing, investigating this tape recorder tied to a branch, not moving for three minutes. And then final step of the Rubik's Cube machine. It's a chain, like a Jacob's Ladder of Polaroid pictures of Henry at different ages. Yes.

And I don't know why this exists. It's not related to the perfect murder. It's some other machine. Why would that be the payoff? No idea. Why would Henry tell her that the only place to commit the perfect murder is a place where if you move an inch, a Rube Goldberg machine will go off and make a lot of noise, a bunch of whizzing bells.

She looks at these Polaroids and she realizes he was just a kid. Because when she drops them off at the talent show where Peter's about to perform right after his brother has died. And Christine is going to perform. His only friend, her surrogate daughter, the one she has the secret handshake with, right? Peter earlier in the movie says he wishes he had died instead of Henry.

And she's like, that is not true. You are just as special to me as he is. But she's so worried with this murder that she's not raising her son who's still alive. Okay, we don't have much time. How much time do we have? Oh, shit.

We are nine minutes. Okay, okay. Enough, enough. No, no, but this is important. This is important stuff. So the talent show, it's set up. This is important, the talent show. Well, I know the talent show's important.

You're going on about our dynamics with Peter. Like, we gotta get to the talent show. Peter's performing at the talent show, so is... These things are cross-cutting, as far as I can remember. But one performance happens before, one happens after. Christina happens first. So he's scribbling on some drawing at the wall, defacing

some other kid's art. And she's like, why are you doing that? And he's like, because Henry would have liked it. She's like, Henry's just a child. He wasn't right about everything. So when the Polaroids goes off, she's like, right, Henry's just a child. He wasn't right about everything. Because an 11-year-old who's dead left me a tape.

So while she's running, racing the clock, driving back to get to position to shoot him, you're seeing a kid do a rap routine, you're seeing tap dancing, happening over now, now dramatic thriller music. And it's a car chasing. She gets there, and while she's debating whether or not

to take the shot and the Rube Goldberg machine is going off, what's her name, Christina? Christina. Christina does a ballet performance which is why they hired

Maddie Ziegler because she's a dancer except the dance routine is so overcut, so backlit, so poorly covered that it could have been anyone. No, but beyond that,

that's not the problem with this. She starts crying, but I'm saying it also defeats the purpose of passing that person. This is the scene. It's immortalized on the poster. It's supposed to be the emotional crux of the movie where Christina does this ballet routine that is essentially her externalizing her abuse.

And she cries during it. Right. She is trying to represent through them the art of dance, how she feels about the fact that she's being sexually abused. And the principal is waiting in the wings, watching with tears in her eyes. And she goes, finally, that's the proof I need. What? A dance is the evidence? This is the point at which everyone in the theater is cackling.

Now, I don't know about you, because you're watching with three old ladies. I saw with three old ladies in the theater. I don't think they're. But every film critic in the audience is just fucking howling. Because how can you not? Like, it is such a goddamn manipulative, like, treacly moment. And this is why I made this comment. It's so unnerved. About seemingly the principal has the only power in the entire movie.

Because once she's convinced by this dance routine, her word is suddenly proved. No, no, no. What happens is she calls the, whatever, she reports it. Okay, but at this point, Naomi Watts has walked out of the treehouse. These things are happening concurrently, okay? Like, really fast all of a sudden. Right, they play fast and loose with time because it also takes her

like 20 minutes to drive to the treehouse. Come on, come on, we don't have much time. Okay, so the principal goes off to make a phone call, right? Naomi Watts comes head to head with Dean Norris. She's holding this assault rifle. She puts the gun like down next to her. Right. She doesn't even leave it in the treehouse. And he's like, what's going on here?

What are you doing? And he's like, what are you doing? Not like, you have a gun. I can shoot you. Yeah, who made this treehouse? It's lovely. Is that a fridge? He's like, what are you doing? And she's sort of like, I know what you're up to. I've seen you.

And he's like, you don't have any proof. You don't know what you're talking about. Who do you think is going to believe, the chief of police or a single mother? And she's like, well, fuck you because I'm on it. She's like, I'm calling the cops. And he's like, I'm calling the cops first. They're going to fucking arrest you for slander. So she drives back to the talent show thinking that she's going to get arrested.

Thinking she's in trouble. For slander? I don't know. Whatever he says. It doesn't matter. Conspiracy. It doesn't matter. Attempted murder.

And then he goes back home and he gets a call from his brother or whoever, like some other cop, where they're like, I got to open this investigation. There's too much heat on this. It's too much. I'm sorry. I can't hold it off anymore. And he's like, sort of like, okay, okay. Puts it off.

What does he do, Griffin? Well, because as she's driving back to the talent show, you hear the sirens and she's like, oh, fuck. I got to drop the cops. They're chasing me. Nope. Those cops are going to his house because the principal called. He hears the sirens arrive outside his door.

Yeah. I saw that coming. Okay. Oh, clean. I saw that coming. Okay. Oh, clean. The real perfect murder. So... She gets back to the talent show just in time as Peter's about to do his magic act

as Peter the Great. Peter has said already, like, Lee Pace asks, like, what are you doing tonight? Oh, because she invites Lee Pace, the doctor. Yeah, the doctor's there. And he's like, what are you doing?

He's like, I'm going to do a magic trick. Because he wants his mom to get the D from the doctor. He gets on stage, and he's like, I will bring my brother back to life. And He's like, I'm going to do a magic trick. Because he wants his mom to get the D from the doctor. He gets on stage and he's like, I will bring my brother back to life. And everyone's like, oh.

No, I know. I actually like this one because everyone in the theater, and imagine being like, you know, this is small town. You know this kid's brother's dead. You're at the school talent show

and suddenly like, it's a real wild card. You're like, wait, what the fuck's this kid going to do? I think he says, I'm going to make my brother

reappear. Maybe that's it. And everyone's like, yeesh. It's like, is he going to take out a corpse? What the fuck is going on? He's got like a treasure, I'm gonna make my brother reappear. Maybe that's it. And everyone's like, yeesh. It's like, is he gonna take out a corpse? What the fuck is going on? He's got like a treasure.

He's got like a chest. He's got a cape and a little top hat. He looks adorable. Jacob Tremblay rules. Cute kid. He's gonna look like me in five years, but for now he's cute. Opens the chest. Taps the chest with his wand.

Chest blows open. What comes out? Soap flakes. Oh, it's like the thing he did. And then they fall from the rafters. Like he set up bags throughout the school auditorium he rigged the entire auditorium

everyone's like oh which mostly I think they're just like oh thank god he didn't do something weird but also they're applauding as if they're like

oh that famous Henry's climbing Mount Everest I think they're just happy everyone knows about it I think they're just happy he didn't like burst into tears but it's not an impressive

magic trick I don't know how do you get the flakes to come out of the chest? You're a cynic. He put flakes in a trick. He put a fucking man in a fence. Flakes, they come out everywhere. Flake man. No one in the audience that has no emotional resonance for them and they'd be like, how does this relate to

his brother? Was he a soap flake fanatic? This fucking movie. Okay, so then they get out of the performance and she's flirting with Lee Pace and they see the cops and she's like, oh, fuck. Okay, I'm gonna get arrested. And then the she's like, oh, fuck. Okay, I'm going to get arrested. And then the principal's like, so Glenn Sickleman shot himself in the head. Yeah, and they tell Christina

and she has no reaction really because she's not a character in the movie and can't act. Yeah, she's not an actress and she's not a character. Cut to courthouse and the judge, like, voiceover from judge, like, I do declare God bless America, that you will be the mother of her forever

in perpetuity unbreakably. Enchilada number one, enchilada number two. She's tucking them in. High five. Christina has maybe two lines in this scene where she goes like, love you, or like, lights off. I'm happy now.

Yeah. And she's reading them a storybook that she wrote because we've forgotten, in the first scene they vaguely establish that she wants to write children's books. Yeah, and she reads them a children's story that she has written and Henry's like, derivative. Yeah, characters are way too predictable. And now she reads it to the two kids who

don't fucking suck. And they're like, that story's great, Mom. That's nice, Mom. Thanks for writing a story for us rather than reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom again. Tucks it under her arm, goes downstairs, does as you do, the ritual burning of my dead son's book and audio tapes so there's no evidence.

And throwing away down a dam of the high-powered rifle I spent $1,100 on. And then what's the last shot of the movie? Isn't it just the lights out thing? I think it's the lights out thing. Yeah, she just like tucks the kids into bed. Stevie Nicks cover. Yeah.

How we doing? See my reflection. Two minutes. Yeah, we did it. You guys did it. I mean, that sounds like trash. That's a real fucking movie. I can't even believe that that is a thing

that's existing right now. It takes a couple left turns, that one. Yeah, but I keep on hearing people talk about the big twists in the movie and it's like, I don't think this is a twist movie.

There's two twists. I think the twists are it does things that movies shouldn't do. Fine. But I mean, look, the trailers, for example, one thing that's funny

about the trailers is they do foreshadow that she's going to buy a gun and try and kill this guy. But they don't tell you that Henry dies. So weirdly, they hide the first twist but not the second twist. But I remember watching the trailer and being like, it's so clear Henry dies because at a certain point in the trailer, she's only

reading his book and he's not there. And she's saying like, Henry wrote it all in the book. They're talking about him in a weird, distant way. I know, but the whole- And she's saying like, Henry wrote it all in the book. They're talking about him in a weird, distant way. But like, the thing about this movie was, look, we all know Colin Trevorrow,

he made Jurassic World, then he gets episode nine. But then everyone's like, oh, he did make this thing in between, Book of Henry. And no one's excited, but it's not like,

you know, you're like, oh, this'll be a bomb. Right. I certainly didn't think it would be a bomb. I thought it would be okay. Because I remember saying to people- I thought it would probably be safe to not guarantee level, where I was like, I don't like it, but at this will be a bomb. I certainly didn't think it would be a bomb. I thought it would be okay. I thought it would probably be safety net guarantee level,

where I was like, I don't like it, but at least it's a movie. This movie sucks, but whatever. And then the trailer posts, and it's about, first half of the trailer is like, an annoying kid, and the second half of the trailer is like, Naomi Watts murder. And everyone was like, what the fuck is this? That was sort of what happened. And then you see the movie, and it's even crazier.

The trailer didn't misrepresent the movie. it actually tried to make it look more normal than it is right and um you're left wondering what the fuck did he think he was making because it doesn't feel like this movie got away from him it doesn't feel like he lost control it feels like he greatly miscalculated the appeal of this story. And there were certain passages of dialogue that really fucking drove me insane. I got a literal headache watching this movie. And I had slept well, ate well, had no other reason other than

this movie was hurting my brain. So I wanted to quote some specific passages of dialogue. And Emily Ishida sent me a PDF of the script, but it turned out to be a draft from like... Yeah, because the script's been kicking around forever. There it is, yeah.

So I started leafing through the script to find the dialogue passages I was looking for, and they weren't in there, and I started to realize, oh, Colin Trevorrow did like a heavy rewrite on this, or someone did. He did change the dialogue. So I look through a lot of this,

and guess what? The dialogue in that script ain't good either. No. No, but a lot of logic apps, like Peter is with her on the murder for the entire movie in that draft of the script. Oh, yeah. Which explains why, like, he isn't just fucking ignoring.

Like, there's certain things that track better. I can see why you take him out, because it makes no sense, even in the twisted logic of this movie. But it doesn't make sense either way. Like, nothing in the movie fucking makes sense. Who do you think this movie is for? No, well, that's, okay, look. Here's my thinking.

Yeah. He read this script and he thought this is crazy. Which is the only reason I assume this script's kicked around for so long. Wow, if someone could really nail the basically halfway through turn of this movie

from family drama into thriller, that'd be like nothing you'd ever seen before. Okay, but fundamental problem. Both halves of the movie as written are bad. Oh, I don't disagree. Like there's a jarring shift between the two. I know, but yeah, I'm just saying.

I'm trying to, you know, why else would you take this scram? Well, I'll tell you my hot take. Okay. As far as I can tell, the one thing that seems to be like across the board in Colin Trevorrow's career, his three movies that I don't like,

but also all interviews I've read with him, is that he loves this idea of upending audience expectations. Yeah. Which is his defense of them murdering the assistant so horribly. Yeah. In Jurassic World. Right. He's really just trying to get a rise out of you.

The ending of Safety Not Guaranteed, which is the opposite of what you think is going to happen, is him being like, ha, you thought this. Look, honestly, look. I don't like Safety Not Guaranteed, which is the opposite of what you think is going to happen, is him being like, ha, you thought this. Look, honestly, look, I don't like Safety Not Guaranteed and I don't like the ending, but I'll admit the reason that movie clicked for people is because the ending lands. Kathy Kennedy said that's the reason, or Steven Spielberg said that's the reason he gave him Jurassic Park. They saw him like melding genre and realistic, I guess, whatever. It's a shitty movie. He's a guy who's really focused on aesthetics of the types of movies he likes

and what type of movie he's trying to make, but he doesn't understand storytelling function at all. So he's attracted to things where it's like, well, the audience is expecting this, but I'm upending expectations. But it's like he's deconstructing things that haven't been constructed yet, you know? Like, he doesn't understand how to make something work

in order to upend it. And so you're left with these situations where it's like he thinks it's funny to have the secretary get murdered in Jurassic World because usually the villain gets brutally murdered. And someone who's innocuous doesn't get hurt that bad. Not murdered. Dinosaurs don't murder people. The pterodactyls murder. She's killed. Brutally.

Yeah, it's quite jarring. As I said, I have never seen a filmmaker have that much fun killing off a character since the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when all the Nazis have their faces melted off. The punishment did not fit the crime, put it that way. Anyway. But I think what he likes about it was he was like, whoa, I was upending the expectations of genre work in this.

And it's like, okay, but if you're not doing it for a reason other than to do the opposite of what people think you should be doing, then guess what? Either it doesn't work or the people who are enjoying it are enjoying it for the wrong reason. Because if someone's liking watching that woman get torn apart by dinosaurs, it's because they're like, yeah, fucking she sucks. She was trying to get married. Bridezilla. So to kind of connect it to this movie, do you think that he read the script and he was like, people never make movies about

kids dying of cancer and then people getting murdered and molestation happening. I'm going to make this to just blow people's minds. It'll surprise people. I think he was like, A, this is a screenplay chock full of things people aren't supposed to do in screenplays.

Which to me feels like it's playing with the tropes and expectations when it's just badly conceptualized. Has he done any interviews about this movie, though? Yes, he has. I've read a bunch of them. Really? There's a Slash film one where he talks a lot about it. Like after?

Yes. Right. I mean, it was published this week, presumably, was an interview done after someone had seen a screening of the movie. Yeah, I'm reading this. And he said that was the whole thing was just like, you know, that twist is so crazy.

And it's like the audience has no idea what's going to happen at the movie at that point. He just loves fucking with expectations. But that's his only trick. I know. I mean, honestly, I saw an interview with Naomi Watts where they asked her about it. And she said the same thing where she's like, it's just so unexpected, like all the mix of tones. And I really like that. Yeah, guess what else is unexpected?

9-11. All right. What? What are you? That-11. All right. What? What are you? That didn't land for me. I'm saying... This movie is... Come on, relax, relax.

Just because something isn't expected doesn't mean it's good. No, I don't... This movie also... It subscribes to the theory that, like, if you put serious things in a movie, then the movie is important. If a movie has cancer and it has murder

and it has molestation in it, then, oh, my God, it's a movie, then the movie is important. If a movie has cancer, and it has murder, and it has molestation in it, then oh my God, it's a movie about real topics. Yeah, but I mean like I'm reading this interview with him, and yeah clearly my reading was right which is he just thinks, hey man there's nothing like this, so if I get it right

like it'll be like nothing else anyone's ever seen and it'll stick out, but there's ever seen. It'll stick out. But there's an arrogance to that, I guess, obviously. And he strikes me as an arrogant man. When he talks about himself in his films, he is very self-impressed, very self-congratulatory. That's fine.

I agree with you, although, again, I don't really want to kick the guy when he's down, but he, look, he's- Down? He's about to fucking make Star Wars Episode IX. I know, he's a little annoying, I will allow. But- He's getting away with it, the perfect crime. Even better than what Henry wrote. But beyond that, it's more like there's a difference

between reading a bad script and saying, I can make a good movie out of this. Especially when he rewrote it to make it worse from an already terrible base. Griffin, for fuck's sake, yes, we know you don't like the movie, but I'm saying he rewrote it trying to make it worse from an already terrible base. Griffin, for fuck's sake, yes, we know you don't like the movie, but I'm saying he rewrote it trying to make it better, right? Like, there's one, you can read a bad script and say, you know what, I could try to just totally rework this movie,

make it good. Sure. Or you could read a bad script and be like, what's bad about this script is good, which is what he did. But also, what I found in a lot of his rewrites were that things that were played a little more straight right once it takes the turn and becomes a little darker

he tried to infuse some more jokes some more light-hearted amblinisms to right like he made it more tonally confused because he wanted this light touch all the stuff with the inventions the rube goldberg machine isn't in the original draft. He added all the whimsical elements. That's just his vibe, right? Because that's kind of what Safety Not Guaranteed is like. But that's totally running counter to everything else the movie's doing. Yeah, but come on.

It was always going to be bad. I agree. There's no good version of this movie. I agree. Right? I agree, but his. Wait, is there? No.

There's no director who's gonna look at this and be like, oh, I have the take. Like, you'd have to totally gut it. Okay, here's my take on that. The second Naomi Watts' character reads his plan to murder the guy, she goes, I'm an adult,

murder isn't the answer, I will figure out how to get him arrested. Right, but then you don't have a movie. Right. I think what you said at the beginning, I will figure out how to get him arrested. Right, but then you don't have a movie. Right. I think what you said at the beginning, the only way you have a movie is if the movie is Henry, Wunderkind super genius, who tries to pull off this murder and doesn't understand how the world works

and realizes the limitations of his own knowledge. I think the second it does the pass off to the mom having to commit the crime, it makes the character just implode. Because you're like, I can't take this woman seriously if she's actually going through with this. I have a big question for you. The question.

Let's play the box office game, and then I have a question. Okay. And then we're done. Okay. This weekend's box office! Yeah, I mean, we're recording this on Saturday, so there are already estimates. But it looks like cars, I mean, I think cars can do around 50, 52. Yeah, I can either we're recording this on Saturday, so there are already estimates. But it looks like Cars, I mean, I think Cars is going to do around 50, 52.

Yeah, I can either give you the Fridays or I can give you the box office estimates. I mean, it's actually an interesting week at the box office, but not because of the book. Cars is like 52. Wonder Woman is going to do like 40. All Eyes on Me is going to do like 34, 35. 32, according to this. Yeah. So, yeah, Cars 3?

51, not great. No, first Cars, I think, opened a 60. Second one opened a 70. Not great, Bob. So it's the lowest. Not great, Bob. The thing they always say about Cars is like, it doesn't matter because it's the toys that sell. Okay, fine.

Fuck you. I think this is the last one they'll do. I think they'll just do specials and shit after this. Wonder Woman holding 32% for $40 million. That's very impressive. A wonderful hold. All eyes on me, the poorly reviewed Benny Boom Tupac biopic, but there's an audience for it that Hollywood does not serve,

so people are after it. So despite the fact this movie's barely been advertised, it's an out-of-the-box hit. Yeah, it's going to make twice its budget opening weekend. Number four, fucking Rough Night flopped like 10 million. I'm hearing that

or calling that the Mandy Moore Shark movie's going to end up doing more than Rough Night. Yeah, it's like in a battle with Mandy Moore Shark. One's going to do nine and one's going to do ten. Hey, 47 meters down. Who'd have thunk? Which was supposed to be DTV, direct-to-video, and then

The Shallows was such a hit. They were like, Sharks, baby! And also This Is Us, NBC Thursdays. I think Mandy Moore starred. And then at the bottom end of this, you got The Mummy doing very poorly. You got Pirates of the Caribbean, which is doing terribly. So how many screens is Book of

Henry on? Book of Henry opened on 579 screens. It's probably going to make about 2 million, I think. Really? Yeah, 11. It's number 11 at the box office behind It Comes at Night. Okay. So that's pretty bad. What was the other question you were

going to ask? Will Colin Trevorrow make Star Wars, colon, episode IX? So that's pretty bad. What was the other question you were going to ask? Will Colin Trevorrow make Star Wars, colon, episode IX? So here's the argument I was making to my friends last night. Because a lot of people have said there's no way he gets fired off of it. Okay? Right. But I don't think it's even about how bad the reviews are. I don't think it's about whether this movie flopped.

It's more about they can't admit they made a mistake. What the? That was alarming. Sorry, yeah. That's my was alarming. Sorry, yeah. That's my ringtone. Oh, cool. Old-timey card porn. Yeah, go ahead.

I think this movie shows such a fundamental sense of misjudgment that is innate into him and his storytelling sensibilities. That coming off of, you know, Force Awakens, which is the highest grossing film in history, Last Jedi which they're apparently very happy with right now and happy with the job Rian Johnson did to then give him the third film and what's the most important film franchise going on today is a big risk.

And Hawken, my friend said, it's sort of like if someone, a babysitter actually accidentally murdered someone else's kids and then called you up and were like hey am i still on to babysit your kids this weekend it's like no you just murdered a kid it's like well but it wasn't your kid yeah no i know i mean to me look if he was making like kevin lincoln had a good article a friend of david sims kevin lincoln involved here that like, it's not like

Trank fucking up Fantastic Four because that's the main event. Fucking up the side event is not as bad. To me, the only argument is it's Star Wars Episode IX. You have to deal with the death of Princess Leia. Yeah, you're dealing with Carrie Fisher dying, but it's the conclusion of

this very popular so far series of films. And Kathy Kennedy's got a strong grip. She kicked Trank off. Gareth Edwards, she kind of put in the backseat for the reshoots. I mean, she doesn't fuck around. The only reason would be if she was somehow worried, but I think there's more

vanity to these producers. They're like, no, this is the guy. We like this guy. We pick this guy. Can I ask why? Because I don't understand. I didn't see his first feature. We like this guy. We picked this guy. Can I ask why? Because I don't understand. He doesn't, I didn't see his like, you know, first feature.

Some people like it. But why is he getting pushed up in the ranks onto this? I don't understand that at all. Is it because Spielberg likes him? You mentioned Brad Bird. He gave this feature that people liked, and then he made Jurassic World, which was a surprise hit, even by those things.

But he's apparently very good in the room he's one of these guys in a meeting who talks like he knows what he's doing but there's like a million other filmmakers out there why is it this guy who's like made I mean you know Jurassic World was really successful in that it made a lot of money

Ben you're tapping right now into the perplexion I deal with every single morning when I wake up I go I don't understand how this happened. Well, look, it's just going to happen. I'll say this, though. The steampunk treehouse sounds cool. We oversell that part. Tune in next week when Ben will be broadcasting from a steampunk treehouse.

That's our new recording studio. I'm into that. So that's the book of Henry, the pot of Davey. And it's my least favorite movie I've ever seen. It made me really, really angry. It's probably the worst film I've seen this year. It's very strange. It will stand, I think, the test of time as like a weird bad movie.

I think so too. Rather than a weird bad movie. I think so too. Rather than a regular bad movie. Especially if he goes on to continue having a successful career. It will be like, what the fuck is this movie? For sure, what was that? But I do think it will be swept under the rug practically. Like it's just going to debut this week. It's going to bomb.

It'll be out of theaters within two or three weeks. Yeah. And we're just not going to talk about it. I'll just say this. I think if Colin Trevorrow still ends up directing Star Wars Episode IX, which I think unfortunately is likely. Yeah, no, for sure. I imagine he'll be kept on a very, very short leash. Could be, sure.

That would be my guess is that he stays on, but they kind of go like, okay, Colin. Because I know they had to throw out the screenplay they already had after Carrie Fisher died. So they're pretty early on whatever they're working on now. You know who's writing the Star Wars Episode IX screenplay? Yes. Colin Trevorrow. And? Derek Connolly, is that his name?

Right, his co-writer. So let me just say, Star Wars Episode IX, coming from the director of Book of Henry and the screenwriter of Monster Trucks. Yeah, that's right. Maybe Creech will be in it. Creech could have been in this. That would have been good.

God, I still gotta meet Creech. You still haven't met him, huh? I haven't met him yet. I haven't met him either. Anyway, so next week, the films of Christopher Nolan. Fuckin'. Well, hold on. Really quick.

Yeah. Just for legal reasons, we should say to our listeners, we don't condone dick punching on this show. Yeah, no, we don't. Don't attack Colin Trevorrow, guys. Don't. He's just a person who makes movies. He's just a person.

And if you happen to connect with his dick, your hand, your listener, whatever, that's not on us. Okay, I'll say yes. I agree, obviously. You know, we have our fun. We do our bits. I don't actually think that anyone should punch Colin Trevorrow in the penis.

I'm sure he's fine. But I'll say this. If, for whatever reason, you were interested, go into the basementvorrow in the penis. I'm sure he's fine. But I'll say this. If for whatever reason you were interested, go into the basement, open up the safe. I have left for you a bunch of mini cassettes. The code is 123. And I figured it out. The perfect crime.

The perfect crime. No one will ever see you punch Colin Trevorrow in the penis. You're going to need a Rube Goldberg puncher. And you've got to throw. A Rube penis machine. You've got to throw the machine into the river when you're done. All right. That was the book of Henry because you demanded it.

I hope you liked it. Weirdos. Well, thanks. I mean, I wasn't going to see that movie, but now I'm definitely never, ever going to. Don't. No, no. Yeah, don't do it. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate,

review, and subscribe. Yep. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some nerdy shit. Sure. Thanks to Ant for Gudo for our social media. Yep. Thank you to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for artwork. Yep. Lee Montgomery for our theme song. Yep. And as always,

this is why there is no other option than punching Colin Trevorrow in the penis. Oh, God.