The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: Book of Henry

Episode Date: April 4, 2020

This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.What happens when you get a tonally confused movie about a dying, genius 11 year old who gets French kissed by a drunk Sarah Silverman, but Guy only watches the first hour of it? THIS FREAKING EPISODE. In what could be described as a coup for the boys, we get treated to a film with real actors, a real story and real stakes. Doesn't make it good but it makes it GREAT compared to all the other pieces of trash the Club provides. *Not featuring Cate Blanchett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our legacy isn't how many commas we have in our bank account. It's who we're lucky enough to have in our lives and what we can leave them with. Henry, remind me again why we can't put you in a gifted school. Because it's better for my psychosocial development for me to interact with a peer group in a normal school environment. Oh, yeah. Hey, Susan? I guess I could just set you up a direct deposit if that's easier. I don't know. I'll have to ask Henry. You have to ask your 11-year-old?

Did our financial statement come in the mail today? Yeah, I forgot to give it to you. I don't know how you do it all by yourself. Come on, I have Henry. Find me another male of the species who's more grown up than him. I'd like to. of the species who's more grown up than him i'd like to this story it's about me my brother my mom and the girl who lived next door henry and peter they're lucky to have you and your father's lucky to have you too stepfather hello and welcome along to our patreon pals

after at your request and mercy uh myself kyle montgomery and my esteemed friend tim bat Along to our Patreon pals after At Your Request and Mercy. Myself, Guy Montgomery, and my esteemed friend, Tim Batt, have just watched a movie called The Book of Henry. But don't be mistaken, it's not a book. It was a movie. Tim, good morning. How are you? Hey, pal. Point of clarification. Is the movie the book of

henry or book of henry this is very important to me i believe it's the book of henry but blow me down uh i could be wrong i'd like i'm gonna check that you keep talking i'm gonna i have i have checked i'm checking this is imperative it says here the book of henry okay great um thank you now i've just watched this movie tim yes and i watched it yesterday yes uh i slept on it i have to tell you something so i uh it was in communication with you yesterday and i was saying oh you know i i sort of sent you a trailer for a movie called tiptoes which someone told me about uh after i'd watched detective pikachu they were telling me we'd gotten quite stoned and watched detective Pikachu. And on the drive home after the movie, he was telling me about how there's a movie called Tiptoes in which Carrie Oldman plays a little person. And Matthew McConaughey, the whole thing is just so far fetched. It's McConaughey and Kate Beckinsale as love interests.

And I think it's, I can't remember if it's kate or mcconaughey whose parents are little people and it's like this big reveal and the families have to meet each other and peter dinklage is in it it sounds like it's make believe but it's it's true and features gary oldman from memory of me watching the trailer a couple months ago and the role of a lifetime yeah that's what they say and honestly if you look it up there's a lot of um like movie blogs which you know he's he features on lists of people saying uh outstanding performance in a in a failed film for what he did uh and anyhow that's all by the by so amongst all that communication we're talking about the book of hen, and you sent me a link to download the film. Wow.

At least not reveal all our tricks, shall we? No, it's necessary that we reveal all of our tricks. And I saw on the – when I opened up the Dropbox link and started – and it was just checking out that it worked, it had a runtime of an hour. And I messaged you and I said, wow, a runtime of an hour? What merciful Patreon pals. And then you sort of said something else like, oh, yeah, I'm watching it now. And life went on.

And then so today I was out and about. I was getting my bike fixed. And they were taking longer than I thought. So I thought I better just start watching this movie now. And I sat down. I was out in the in uh in the world and I sat down and started watching this movie uh on my phone and I saw the opening title sequence and I saw all of these names like Cate Blanchett and uh Sarah Silverman Bobby Moynihan amongst other probably more esteemed

actors but not not who I necessarily know and I thought wow this is an incredible cast and the opening credit sequence I was like this is an incredible cast. And the opening credit sequence, I was like, this is a pretty good opening credit sequence. This movie knows what it is and what it's trying to do. I thought something must have gone really awry for a movie with this title, opening sequence, and this cast to have been condensed down to an hour-long runtime.

And then I started watching the movie, and I was like, wow, for a movie that only lasts an hour long runtime and then i started watching the movie and i was like wow for a movie that only lasts an hour these guys are super confident with their pacing they are in no rush to get through the beats of the story and then about 40 minutes in after we were introduced to a subplot in which the next door neighbor who's a the police inspector or a police commissioner is uh you know under there's a suspicion that he might be in an abusive relationship with a stepdaughter and played by hank from breaking bad put that fella in your head everyone there you go and uh and henry at 40 minutes in while while this subplot has just been introduced, Henry is diagnosed with a malignant tumor and is killed off about 45 minutes into the movie.

And I was thinking, Jesus Christ, we've got a lot of resolution to smash into 15 minutes of screen time here. Movies aren't ever an hour. There's not even the length of any film. I know, but these patreon pals they throw some pretty weird shit at us you know my mind hikens back to the the street kids who that youtube video was where there was that crazy anime that christmas animation but i was really it was like 90 minutes no it wasn't and also the there was the other that christmas film but i was

really confused and it wasn't until 58 minutes and i realized something's not right here and i doubt i walked home while watching the movie and i downloaded the file it's an hour and 45 minutes of movie yes it is and this is one of the few times when i was watching a movie and uh keeping an eye on the rain time and i was like we're running we're running out of space like i was devastated to see that the movie was going to end because i was genuinely invested in the characters and wanted to see what happened i've watched an hour of this movie and now we're on we're on the call but that was one of the most confusing and like uh quite um i was like really dumbfounded as to how they were going to make all this work in the air it was a

hell it was a hell of an hour damn it monty we've got to be better than this fucking rolling here having watched half of the fit yeah i think it's an hour and 45 minutes i've watched more than half the movie thank you all right should i then explain what happens in the second half to you i guess it's got to come out at some point anyway no i would I would say you didn't. I want to watch the other 45 minutes of this movie for pleasure. What are we doing then? What are we doing here? There's an hour of great movie to unpack. No, you shit.

I'm not going to not talk about the ending. Okay, but no spoilers. I will definitely spoil it. I don't know how I couldn't. I don't know how I could talk about the ending without spoiling it. We were exchanging some messages yesterday, like in between you watching the film, and you were stressed out by the movie.

You were speculating that the lead character was an alien. Yeah, that was... Yeah. In reference to what we... I did think that. I thought it was going to get K-Pax on us because he's freaking out. He starts getting these head...

Okay, so Henry, boy genius, 12 years old. We open with a lot of Rube Goldberg machine type things that he's created in effectively his treehouse, even though it's on ground level. And this kid, he's a dynamo. Not enough attention is paid to this in the film, but he is trading stocks, chronic and he's doing so with such proficiency that he's he's managed to um amass a nest egg of eight hundred thousand dollars

which he leaves for his mother after he carks six hundred and sixty thousand dollars i beg your pardon sorry um so he's yeah he's a boy wonder he's a kid genius, he's a kid genius, and he's got a younger brother who's a couple or three years younger than him. And he's very moralistic in addition to being very smart. But here's the thing about Henry, you guys. He is utterly insufferable as a character. Despite the fact that he is supposed to be the emotional core of this film yeah i stand behind that he's but you know it's you put a kid in there you put a 12 year old kid you're supposed to love them especially one who's going through health problems especially one who's

very uh cares about other people very empathetic and yet this kid i want to fucking kick him in the head every time he's on screen because he's so precocious he's telling his mum off for swearing all the time in front of the the younger kid the single parent who's doing her best working in a diner alongside sarah silverman just trying to put the coins together to get food on the table and this kid's fucking giving her shit for playing video games blowing off a little steam at home and for swearing lightly I might add, no c-words I don't think there were any f-bombs either in front of the other kid

get fucked Henry go fuck yourself hey why don't you go fuck yourself, Henry's doing his best Henry's a precocious little shit I liked Henry I thought the kid who was playing him there were shades of a young Tobey Mag Henry I thought the kid who was playing him there were shades of

a young Tobey Maguire I thought and he's like he's quite freaky what's he been in? he's been in It he's the main kid in It his name's Jaden Martell which I think is his stage name

yeah and he's you know he's it's a hard character I'm not putting it on the actor at all but that kid the script writing it's just like man I want to boot that little kid. I want to give him a kick. I disagree.

I thought the little kid was great. If you want to talk about who should be booted, it's the great Sarah Silverman. And as you can imagine, in this sort of truncated, hour-long version of the movie, when he's in the hospital and she comes and visits him and they confess that they actually get along even though they have like a surface level mean-spirited relationship and he says i think you're pretty and then she gives him what is very much a sexualized kiss yeah i was like i would estimate your character to be 35 at least it's like and we can't be introducing you know these sorry he's he's 11 going on 12 yeah i was like is it i mean it was they were just stuffing so much new stuff

into the movie when there was under 15 minutes to go i was uh oh god really fascinated to see how it all played out guy guy guy guy guy that that freight train of adding ingredients to mix two completely different metaphors that never stopped that never stopped this is more and more there was a because yeah this was one of those movies where you feel like you're watching multiple different movies within a movie because it opens up and you get a real sort of disney vibe because there's a a whole raft of especially from the 90s disney's flicks where the and john hughes kind of dabbled in this with home alone as well where um kids are fucking awesome adults are stupid and let's have a rollicking good time exploiting that as a premise and this is sort of

like that except i hated the kid i was like the kid is smart but i hate him because he's precocious he needs to chill out so i don't like anyone in this except naomi watts who i always like and i think she is underappreciated for how good an actor she is i kind of think i think she's a victim of how beautiful she is to be honest and then she was in like kong so everyone just sort of put put her in their head as like the damsel in distress type she's a fine actor no she gets hers kate blanchett is uh critically and commercially successful and revered naomi watts we're talking about not kate blanchett kate blanchett is neither in this movie nor kong um no yeah i i i funnily enough i get them confused uh but natalie watts also i think she also gets hers doesn't she i hope so i hope so she she does well but uh oh yeah it's so

interesting i genuinely think because because i watched this whole we're not this whole movie because i watched this whole hour of movie under the belief that something had gone catastrophically wrong and they'd had to cut it down to an hour and it didn't get released in cinemas and was somehow just floating around the internet as this weird spare parts failed experiment. I was constantly blown away by how competent it was and how invested I was becoming.

I think the ticking time bomb element of knowing that they were running out of time to tell the whole story really had me like leaning closer and closer and closer to the screen I think had I watched it knowing it was an hour and 45 minutes I might have fallen out of love with Henry but the whole time I was like go go yes you saw his whole life span as well though I know but I didn't see I didn't see uh the family discovering the book i didn't see the consequence of what what they did on discovering the contents of the book and the aspersions that henry was casting on the neighbor well i i know i said no spoilers but i

as the conversation wears on i'm now open to the story being revealed uh through you tim my closest friend and ally. I'm also your ally. Now, the interesting thing is this is one of those movies where on Rotten Tomatoes, it's got a pretty low score, 22%. We've watched worse. We regularly watch worse. But the IMDb score is 6.6 out of 10. So this is one of those ones where it's like,

we can all agree, not like a great film but i would call it a competent film and it's um it's kind of like it's a bit art housey yeah yeah it's like it's it's awards bait kind of movie making exactly exactly and when it first the first the very first thought that went through my head when it started up the kind of movie making exactly exactly and when it first the first the very first thought that went through my head when it started up the kind of intro sequence for the whole film which i can't even remember what it was now what what was it what was the first thing it's once the movie actually starts or the actual intro sequence what do you first seen see on screen there are these sort of etchings of these rube goldberg style machines like it's

like we're turning through the pages of the book of henry yeah so um i was like i bet this was shot on 35 millimeter film this looks not digital which i i i'm no i don't know i've never made a movie but i feel like that's what you do when you're chasing awards you fucking shoot something about a dying kid on film um anyway before we launch into the the final third or you know the the big conflict and resolution of the movie yeah could i please uh i would like to talk to you about the things i was left curious about after my hour of movie making i would love to hear what you think happens at the end well this is walkout boys this is to walk out boys it is uh the impression i got was that uh but i'm i'm speculating i'm speculating as accurate as i can cape blind by the way i just want to clear up because the majority of people won't know

what the fuck i'm talking about. Walkout Boys was a very funny podcast where Nick Sampson and Joseph Will would go see a blockbuster film, but they had to walk out at the halfway point and then guess at what happened in the second half of the movie. It was very good. So I think Cate Blanchett, first of all, does not show up at all in the movie. Naomi Watts, however, does continue to portray the the role of mother and uh i there was quite a clearly laid romantic spark between her and the doctor i thought yep uh so i imagine that they probably get together there's some sort of conflict around uh possibly what's going on with the

neighbor that pulls them apart, but they ultimately wind up together. What we see is the beginnings of a cohesive family unit between her, the doctor, and the surviving son. I think that probably the younger brother discovers Henry's book and keeps it to himself and tries to solve the uh abuse saga that's taking place next door and at one point there's uh doubt cast over his detective work probably by the doctor maybe which is the conflict that drives him and uh namie watts apart but ultimately he's proven right and the doctor's very uh contrite and apologizes um

sarah silverman might get off the grog uh i mean these are sort of the the main things i yeah these are the main things i think about what was left to me was like romantic tension uh family situation and i wanted to see i really wanted to see that neighbor get his comeuppance because he was he there was something sinister about that man guy here's what happens in book of henry so the kid dies the second kid no sorry no henry dies the kid uh the the so henry's book is discovered by the mother and he lays out a plot as you rightly point out to get the neighbor henry's plot is to kill hank that would explain the trip to the gun shop i should have probably put that in there yes exact yes so there is a um there's a trip to the gun store where he overhears the transaction being

made where he's like oh who's the guy he's like you know oh dom he's like dominic sent me the guy's like i can't sell you again he's like dominic sent me dominic sends his regards he's like all right i'll go get it sort of thing so what henry does before his untimely death is sets out the details in this book and on an audio recording which we then see naomi watts chuck some earbuds in and listens to he talks his mom through getting out some cash from an atm going into the gun store saying exactly the right thing to get a very specific sniper rifle with a silencer on it practice shooting it and he guides her through like how to shoot this gun in the woods doing target practice and then on the night when there's the uh school like talent show yeah

um school like talent show yeah that makes sense that's the night because we know that hank not his real name just hank from breaking bad the the bad dad he uh didn't want to go he was i can't be bothered um going to that so she knows that he will be there and all of the town will be at the school so this is the night to do it so So plans every detail meticulously, Henry does, and explains it posthumously through an iPod to his mother. And so she's listening to all these instructions, and she's setting up the gun, and it all goes through. And then there's this cross-cut scene at the end where she's lining up the shot,

waiting for him to get into the sights of the gun while the daughter, who he has been abusing, is doing a ballet performance. Yeah, yeah. So it's all fucking high stress, you know? I mean, I can only imagine how interesting this actually is to our listeners. But to me, this is like gripping edge of the seat kind of storytelling.

I am so invested. This is a new way to watch a movie. That's why I said I was stressed. Yeah. So then I'm trying to think if I'm like skipping any really important bits. I probably am. Um. What's, uh, what's Sarah Silverman doing?

Anything? Fuck, man. Do you know, I was really trying to remember when you mentioned Sarah Silverman. I was like, what does end up happening to her? I can't, I can't even fucking remember. I don't think anything. We know she's a boo sound with a heart of gold and a ponchant for mouth kissing precocious young boys. Yeah, I don't know if she comes back in any series.

That's so bad. I watched this yesterday. Man, I've been up since four because my dog was vomiting and then I couldn't get back to sleep. So I've been up too early. So anyway, she accidentally, when she's lining up the shot, trips something over in the treehouse because that's where she's hiding to lining up the shot trips something over in the treehouse because that's where she's hiding um to to line up the shot and it sets off one of the rube goldberg machines and i thought it was gonna i thought it was and hilarious i should hope i know the tone of this is so fucking outlandish it just goes all over it's like you know suddenly we're in a um born identity you know spin-off

where she's got a goddamn sniper rifle playhouse yeah in the in the woods but we are also inside peewee's playhouse so she accidentally triggers that off which you sort of i think led to believe is going to make so much damn noise that Hank, because, oh, we didn't mention this, Hank is the police commissioner of the whole town that they're in. And at one point earlier in the film, Henry actually calls Child Protective Services, or the equivalent, to their house because he sees stuff going on and he can't stand just standing by and doing nothing.

Also, while we're inside of this insert, he has warned the principal of his school that he thinks there's something untoward happening, but she is an old friend of Hank and doubts him, which is what moves him to become frustrated and call child services. And we watch child services arrive at the house through the eyes of the still-living Henry at the time. So did you see the bit where he figures out that the guy who's in charge of child protective

services is hank's brother yeah because uh we see in like an iconic scene that is in every single movie starring a child lead we see him uh muttering the name of a dastardly adult to himself under his breath i think it's sickleman and he got you here it's such a it's so perfect delivery goes sickleman and you're like yes yeah of course uh so uh where are we the rube goldberg machine goes off it creates a lot of noise but not enough noise as it turns out in the movie to actually get hank to like draw a weapon and start chasing her which i thought was what was going to happen what it does do is it pulls down all these photos of henry as a baby with his mom like childhood you know baby photos and so she sees that they they like appear on the wall they kind of fall outward that's the last bit of the

rube goldberg machine which i mean you know we don't need to get into it but that's fucking dumb you like why have a rube goldberg machine that reveals photos you own to you very silly um and so she she's like nah man i'm not gonna kill this guy that's crazy and it's like yeah you're right that is fucking wild and it's nuts that the movie brought us to a point where we were you had your finger on the trigger and we're all like well i guess this is the bit where henry's mom kills the next door neighbor who's been abusing the child and that will be our happy ending for this movie is it confirmed that he is abusing the child at this point um yes how do they confirm like i mean you don't say i mean i i know that you're you're a real stickler

for seeing things transpire on screen and if you don't see them you don't believe them but i mean it is heavily uh insinuated beyond that is indeed the case like obviously henry's precocious him he's our hero and so we believe everything he says but beyond what is revealed while he's still alive it's made yet more obvious still it's very obvious very obvious great that he's the baddie so um so then what happens is she's like she rings the police no the guy the doctor comes round to the house and like finds her with the gun i can't remember who rung the police it's either him or her she rang them himself but she's like putting the gun down and kind of you know nothing very serious comes to that because she wasn't going to shoot him anyway so the the guy emerged that, that love interest doctor dude,

he kind of emerges after she's had this critical moment of realizing that shooting the neighbor would be an insane thing to do. And then cop cars show up and then Hank realizes that, you know, he's, he's done, he's been caught. And you see all these,

how did that happen? What do you, what do you mean? How did the cop cars get there? How did Hank get caught? Well, because they called the cops, and they were like... I think she...

So she has this face-off with him, and she's like, hey, you're fucked. I know what you've been doing, and it's over. Now you know who you're dealing with, and it's me and so she kind of like falls into the shoes of henry in terms of being a good samaritan to actually you

know take some action to do something rather than being a bystander yeah so at one point henry does very confidently say that violence isn't the worst thing in the world the worst thing in the world is apathy and at that point i'm now imagining you screaming at the computer saying no the worst thing in the world the worst thing in the world is apathy and at that point i'm now imagining you screaming at the computer saying no the worst thing in the world is an 11 year old fucking boy who thinks he knows everything man i'm like i i i admire the qualities and the values that this film is putting forward but it just inside the vessel of this but it's not that stuff that bugs me it's him constantly telling his mum off for, like, minor shit. It's just like, give it a rest, mate. She's doing her best.

That is the fun and games part of the movie, where it's like, oh, look at this crazy dynamic. The mum's the son, and the son's the mum. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't play well to me. Anyway, so here's the really wild bit, Guy. Guy, it's not done. I'm Kat Montgomery.

Yeah, I'm fucking listening, brother. Keep talking. We're not done yet because the final twist of this film is that Hank steps outside and kills himself, and that is our happy ending. Did Cate Blanchett and the doctor kiss okay once again kate blanchett not featured in this movie not for a damn second okay well what about naomi watts i don't know i don't i don't think they kiss i should know that no it doesn't seem appropriate I'm pretty sure they didn't kiss at the end.

But I also can't remember what happens to Sarah Silverman. What has happened to my fucking brain? Do you know what else doesn't seem super appropriate? And what I'm assuming was a PGA film. What? Is a character killing themselves at the end? Is the happy ending? Yeah, man.

Yeah, true that. Oh, yeah. the other thing that happens okay i think i just got i got swept up in in the silliness or something but so henry's little brother his entry into the uh talent show thing that they're doing at school is he's he's gonna do a magic trick and so he comes on as a magician and he tells the whole room, he said, hey, everyone, I'm going to bring my brother back

before your very eyes. I'm going to bring him back to this room. And everyone's just like, oh, no. This kid doesn't realize that his brother has, you know, he's passed away and he's not coming back. He's a goner. So there's kind of a lot of lead up to that. He's got a box.

He sees Abracadabra, taps it with his wand a few times. You're like, oh, no, what's going to happen? And then just a whole bunch of, like, shaving cream kind of spurts out at the crowd. And that's the ultimate ending, like, slow motion, sort of a confetti-type situation. It's pretty wild. Oh, wow.

What do you think of the hour that you saw, though? Like, what is your... Why do you think this movie didn't work? Because it didn't. If you watch it under the impression it is only an hour long, you will be absolutely enamored invested and engaged the whole time you will not be able to put your phone down you will experience this movie as you would

any movie that commands your attention in the sense that the outside world closes off to you and all you want to know is what is happening in the lives of these characters. You will become stressed when you realise that they're probably not going to have enough time to deal with all of the plot elements that they've introduced and then in the last sort of two minutes from that

58 minutes to that one hour mark you'll think to yourself, okay maybe the movie hasn't got it wrong here, maybe I've made some sort of mistake. I ask you, Tim, do you think I'm going to watch the remaining 45 minutes of this movie even now I know how it plays out after this conversation? Yeah, I best believe you will. Absolutely.

It's such an interesting thing that's happened to me now because this movie has vaulted itself from what would have been just a forgettable patreon watch to like something which i have a weird investment in connection to it's not a wholly terrible film it's very watchable and and considering the bar of film that we're usually thrown by our powers at patreon like this this this is probably the best movie we've been asked to watch would you say uh like objectively in terms of as a movie being a movie i think this might be the best film we've been asked to watch yeah i'm just sort of rifling through what what we have seen and all i'm really remembering is like brain bucky larson uh that weird christian christmas movie and the weird animated one food fight

there's been some great some great hits there fuck man i'm trying to read the variety review out loud but god damn it there's a lot of ads getting in my way on the flipping mobile version of this website jesus i can't even i cannot access the page for this fucking pop-up quiz it's giving me. Wow, that's annoying. Okay. It's probably going to come back, so I'll try and read this quick. There's the kind of bad movie that just sits there, unfolding with grimly predictable monotony.

Then there's the kind of badass... Oh, sorry, badness sorry i'm going to start that again then there's the kind where the badness expands and metastasizes taking on a jaw-dropping life of its own pushing through to the ever higher heights of garishness the book of henry directed by colin trevorrow from from William Hurwitz's script, is of the latter. You've got to see it to disbelieve it variety. The film's muted, yet still rather flamboyant.

Fucking, the fucking quiz came back. God damn it. Do some of the quiz. I can't bring myself to do it. I'm going to skip to something called Common Sense Media, which is coming up very high in Google, so that indicates to me it's of high prestige. They have given this film, oh, kind of hard to see.

I think one star. Parents need to know that the book of Henry is a drama with very dark subject matter. A child gets sick and dies. He's shown in a hospital bed with tubes having seizures and dying in his mother's arms while family members cry over him plus a boy makes an elaborate plan to commit murder sounds crazy in retrospect and his mother naomi watts ultimately decides to carry out the plan going so far as to buy a gun and attempting to shoot her neighbor

a man kills himself off screen viewers hear the gunshot maybe this is one of those websites where they just like point out all the sort of trigger warnings for um parents maybe maybe that's why this is no good sounds a bit like what's happening there yeah okay we're gonna have one more run at this, and this comes to us from Vulture.com. Emily Yoshoda. Good stories remind us of who we want to be in Tones Henry. Yoshida. Yoshida.

She's a great critic. Oh, I beg your pardon for the pronunciation. Good stories remind us of who we want to be in Tones Henry in a voiceover over the final minutes of the book of Henry, which raises the question, who in the book of Henry do you want to be? The 11-year-old genius with tragic illness and a posthumously revealed homicidal streak? The single mother with a first-person shooter addiction? A seemingly bottomless bank account and mad ukulele skills?

Or maybe it's the alcoholic waitress who kisses young boys on the lips when their mothers are out of the room. Thank you! Don't worry, this movie thinks it's cute. By the end of the film, you may just decide you want to be Peter, Henry's younger brother, who mostly just watches the rest of the movie happen around him in a daze, but is adorable. Who doesn't want to be adorable?

Such is the cornucopia of characters and scenarios in The Book of Henry, movie happen around him in a daze but is adorable who doesn't want to be adorable such as the cornucopia of characters and scenarios in the book of henry a film written by novelist greg hewitts and directed by jurassic jurassic park oh jurassic jurassic world's colin trevorrow seemingly in a vacuum far far away from anything vaguely resembling actual things that happen and people who exist it does not suffice to call the book of henry bad it's non-functional so poorly conceived from the ground up is to slip out of the grasp of the usual standards one applies to narrative film it might be admirable if it wasn't such a torture to watch i could go on but i think that's a good synopsis of of this uh review No. To me, these film critics need to walk

a goddamn year in our fucking movie-watching shoes. Yeah, no shit, man. This film, by comparison, competent. All good.

All good. I guess if I had to say great, this could be Oscar-worthy. Who did you gravitate towards in this film man uh i naturally i liked um i i in hearing it spelled out like that you know i'm one of those people who i'll read an article and i'll think to myself yeah of course absolutely and then two hours later i'll read the counterpoint to the article and i'll think yeah no no doubt so in hearing those very

scathing and articulate reviews I'm like yeah no this movie does not take place in reality and I probably am not divorcing the character enough from the performer but Sarah Silverman's sort of you know classic white sort of alcoholic quippy waitress character was um i was always interested to see her on screen she's probably the person i mean but like she doesn't exist in reality when they arrive to find her because she didn't show up to her shift at work that morning and she's

passed out on her back porch from drinking wine you know presumably the night before and somehow softens naomi watts's character enough to sit down and have some wine with her her two young boys in tow you know you think about that and you're like there's this no none of the characters none of this makes sense no but uh why why do you say that i think that makes sense. I don't think... It looks cold. I don't think that she would wake up and be dry and fine after falling asleep outside for the entire night. Oh, I see.

From a medical point of view. From a medical point of view. And then also, I don't think... The reaction to that... I mean, from that point, all of the responses to that situation are false because it's not coming from a place of truth but uh i don't think cape blanchett would be like yeah sure i'll just sit down and drink some wine with my clearly alcoholic friend in front of my two boys even though we have flipped the mum and son roles i just thought

no that's not true but i i was always interested in uh seriously i Bobby Moynihan's character who ran the diner at which loved him I loved him and I was invested in his story because I was like you need to find better employees man yeah dude that's true I think Naomi Watts was she was a good worker though

oh except actually when Henry dies she goes back to work and there's a I don't know if you saw this or not guy i saw this yeah fucking one hour when they go uh coke gets delivered to the table yeah and so she takes a big old swig out of the glass and she says yeah that's regular coke no fuck she says diet coke that i remember i also remember this stuff um doesn't she smoke a cigarette and in that bit as well or am i imagining oh no that's when she's baking for the um for peter she just like starts smoking cigarettes and swearing to peter yeah it's i mean who did you what did what did you

separate from the reviews and my own experience what did you make of the movie on the whole because you did tell me it was stressing you out and you did think that the lead character was an alien so so i'll tell you when i'll tell you when so when he okay so he's got because i haven't seen it in ages and now i will never see it because kevin spacey has done what he has done but kpax is kind of a vibe i got briefly and this movie switches gears and genre and tone so many times i'm like yeah fucking maybe he is an alien maybe that's what this movie's about he's been getting these crazy headaches we know that he is of completely abnormal intelligence for a normal 11 year old human boy and then when he's in the hospital getting all the tests and stuff done on him he runs to

the window and tries to open it and he gets obsessed with like looking out to the sky and i was like fuck yeah this kid's a fucking alien that rules because i thought he was trying to get a bit of a line of sight to his mothership or something and they were going to beam him back up you know like a little gift from from heaven above and they'd take him away again um turns out the movie didn't quite have that fantastical sense of uh imagination but i sure did well as you can imagine going in knowing that this is what you thought i was also looking out for that stuff and i did think at the same moment when he looks up he has to look at the sky that this kid was um possibly oh i still didn't really believe it but like his precociousness

goes entirely unexplained this is not like your ordinary child genius and that this child cannot necessarily exist in reality such as his like certainty in his moral values and just like the overwhelming preternatural intelligence he displays across all areas and facets of life he diagnosed his tumor to the doctor from hearing the symptoms described back to him using the exact medical jargon he plays the stock market from a pay phone as an 11 year old without a voice modifier to the to the tune of 660 000 like in in every facet of his life he is too intelligent to exist in the world as an 11 year old boy surely there is no one who is this intelligent out there i don't know maybe

at least it wasn't like what's that um bradley cooper movie where he gets super intelligent because of that pill it wasn't to that level the smart pill but you know what i'm talking about no i know but that sounds fun at least it's like there's some sci-fi horse shit explanation for why he's being like that but in in this one, we just meant to believe that this kid is somehow this intelligent. He's a gifted child. When they took out the tumor, before they told him

that he had a terminal tumor, I thought they were going to say, we took out what we could of the tumor and it will impact parts of your brain. And I thought, oh, so now he's just going to have to live as a regular child. I thought that might be the consequence of it. i did not anticipate that he was gonna uh die or or

swing the other way and he has to learn a lesson of humility because he becomes uh disabled after the surgery that's a good movie well it's a different movie isn't it it's probably a good movie because i really didn't take to the character so it's not in a way of like comeuppance but just in a way of like a lesson learned i'd be like this kid was a little shit and then everything was taken away from him isn't life fickle and you are you my friend are a monster and i kind of respect you for it but at least even if even if they took out the tumor and he did become ordinarily intelligent at least there'd be some effort at medically qualifying i know that with some storytelling it's better not to ask these questions because

then the audience starts asking them as well but his intelligence was too overwhelming to not at least have some basic understanding or throwaway sentence in reference to why it might be that way. I'm not with you on that, man. I think this is just a gifted kid. They exist. They're rare, but they're out there. Playing the stock market, self-diagnosing their tumours. Maybe not exactly.

As qualified as the best neurosurgeon in the area and as the best money financier. I hear you, I hear you. But it's a movie as well. But it wasn't to the point of like, I don't know, yeah, I don't know. It wasn't superhuman.

It was just very, very, very smart. Especially for an 11-year-old. The only humanizing element of this young boy, the only thing that made me think maybe he is human is that I know for a fact when he's on that pay phone making decisions about the stock market, do you know who's on the other end of that phone line? Who's that?

My friend and yours. Financier John James Preston. Oh, do you reckon? That's so weird because I thought you were going to say, old mate from where are your friends? Fucking... Paige? God, yes, dude.

Paige is on the other end taking those transactions. Fuck. Isn't that what they were doing in there? Like penny stocks and stuff stuff a three-headed investment fund spearheaded by the the triple-headed monster that is henry mr big and page from where are your friends trinity finance oh man unstoppable can we just talk we just like i know we've talked about a little bit but get into this kiss thing? Because it's got shades of big to it.

You know in Big with Tom Hanks where the full-grown adult woman like hooks up with a boy who's in a man's body? I've not seen Big, but I'm imagining from your description that the full-grown adult woman is aware that it is a boy that she's kissing. Yeah, I think that's true. I that she's kissing yeah i think that's true i think she's doing it full known and there's no escaping even a lush like sarah silverman's character in this film like i mean he doesn't look old he looks 11 he's 11 and he looks 11 and he's on we now know his deathbed and to give him an open mouth kiss i mean i don't know what the movie's trying to

sort of do for us there there's an aspect of i like i get the whole feeling of he's gonna die a virgin sort of thing like he's gonna die having never been kissed so we've got to give him this one kiss but they've already set up a romantic interest for him which is the appropriately aged next door neighbor but then they i guess have complicated that by putting her in an abusive relationship with her stepdad so for her to give him a kiss might be a bit complicated but i think no more complicated than a fucking drunk 36 year old buxom sarah silverman pashing him so i don't know pick your poison i think they should have thrown the little girl at him. I don't know that he needed to kiss anyone. Right of passage.

It's a coming of age film, in addition to all the other movies this is. I don't even think he was trying to seduce Sarah Silverman. He was just explaining in scientific terms, using the appropriate language, qualifying what their relationship is to each other which is pretty much a slightly more articulate version of the playground uh i mean to you because i like you exactly and he calls her pretty but you know an 11 year old

can call a 36 year old pretty without trying to seduce them this is the real question the movie poses but i'm gutted that you and i know you'll see it now but i am gutted that you haven't seen naomi watts become an assassin and they dress you like an assassin clothes she's all in black and shit it's fucking wild you know i'm frustrated to think when i was speculating about the second half of the film i missed both of the delightful uh henry's guns of naomi watts always playing first person shooter games and uh henry going well actually i missed so i missed i missed the talent show as a qualifier i missed the gun shop and the meaning that would have like the significance that would take on and uh naomi watts's uh addiction to first person shooters i'll tell you what else I actually really missed

was the presence of Cate Blanchett at all in this movie. But that's how they make him. That's all you can do. All you can do is watch him how they make him and curb the last 45 minutes of screen time. Not since Paddington 2 has such beautiful and symmetrical storytelling, opened so many boxes

and later closed all of those boxes so skillfully we have a lot of fun don't we this is this is the tricky thing about bad movies though folks they're hard to trust so when you get thrown information you don't know where to put it you're like is this a clue as to what will happen later in the movie? Or is this unneeded exposition handed to me by an unskillful filmmaker? And that's why I don't think you need to feel too bad about it, Guy. Completely understandable that you would see Henry go into a gun shop and just chalk it up to, well, I guess this is just a thing the movie's throwing at me.

Or Naomi Watts' character being addicted to first person shooters on console it's just like yeah okay i guess this is their version of a three-dimensional single mom is having a playstation you know i get it because the movie's weird hard to trust but it turns out puts it all back in. This movie, The Book of the Henry, for me, three stars. And I'm not even being facetious. Man, it's impossible for anyone listening to this podcast to watch the movie as I just did. But to anyone who watches The Book of Henry

under the impression it's an hour-long film and is worried about how they're going to resolve all the story and then later finds out through talking to a close friend who has watched the whole film exactly how batshit it does go. I mean, this is a five-star movie-watching experience for me. Brilliant. I think our first five-star in the Patreon palace. That's fucking one for the books, everyone.

The books of Henry. So thank you so much Please vote for Tiptoes I know that I probably It's probably illegal for me to get in a medal With the next election But my god that trailer has wet my appetite For that movie in ways

I cannot describe Maybe we could watch it in our leisure time Maybe we could And also in our leisure time we will be heading stateside guy already is he's in new york city right now as we speak and i will be joining him uh we've got a show in new york city at littlefield and uh that's on the i know do you want me to say please it's on the 23rd of June, Sunday the 23rd of June. The next night at Sleeping Village in Chicago, Monday, June 24th.

We also have a live show and later that week on Wednesday, June 26th at the Clinton Street Theatre in Portland. And on Friday, June 28th in Los Angeles, California at the Dynasty Typewriter. If you are in or near those places or know anyone who listens along who is, please buy a ticket. Come on down. Visit the boys. We'll have a good time.

The places that we've selected to go into are all fucking dope and they're kind of like slightly smaller venues. They're all like around sort of 100 to 150 seaters. So we got to sell these puppies out please come bring a friend and you will be treated to not only a um live show as we end this season and i don't know what we're doing after this not only that but you'll be treated nothing for a long time a piece of media 26 minutes in length from memory that guy and i made which we are legally

prohibited from showing in uh other circumstances maybe even the ones in which we're showing it so we'll see you there little empire podcast.com slash live thank you so so so so so much to all of our patreon pals we will see you very soon we endeavor to finish watching Sex and the City 52 times. Thank you and God bless. No matter what, don't panic. I'm not panicking. We have to make it better.