Movie Review

Directed by Gary Marshall, starring: Juliette Lewis (Carla), Diane Keaton (Elizabeth), Tom Skerritt (Radley), Giovanni Ribisi (Danny), Hector Elizondo (Ernie), 130 minutes, 1999.

This little sleeper of a movie will have you in stitches of laughter and will bring tears to your eyes. The Tates, Radley and Elizabeth are a wealthy couple living in San Francisco. They have three beautiful daughters. Carla, the youngest, has "some social adjustment problems". (It is hard to get the terms right. Radley cannot bring himself to say "retarded". A friend of mine with a child with similar problems says that the term 'autistic' is now used more widely to describe a number of behaviours in which there is both high intelligence and low social skills/ tantrums.) Carla has been in a high end treatment centre for a number of years but returns home to begin life as a young adult at the time that her middle sister (Caroline) is about to get married. Her older sister (Heather) struggles to get her mother to accept her partner Michelle.

Carla is determined to be independent and enrolls in the Bay Area Polytechnic and wants to be a veterinary's assistant. On the first day she meets Danny, also 'retarded'. Her mother is horrified that Carla would develop an interest in a boy. Elizabeth is passionate in her protection of Carla, wants what is best for her but feels solely responsible for her well being and continues to deflect Carla's attempts at independence. To say that she is 'uptight' understates the concept! (She buys three fire extinguishers for Carla's apartment.)

Danny works in a cookie bakery but his passion is marching bands. The band and the conductor are extraordinarily understanding and welcoming. His father pays the rent on his apartment as long as he passes his courses at the poly but, alas he fails one and so he is under a threat that he has to go to Florida to join his mother.

At Caroline's engagement party Danny gets drunk, proposes publicly to Carla which promotes panic from her mother and laughter from the country-club-crowd. Carla is enraged; Danny is humiliated; the family is in disarray. Danny leaves for Florida on a train but somewhere in Arizona abandons his trip and hitch-hikes back to San Francisco where Caroline's wedding is taking place. The Graduate has been their favourite movie and in a scene somewhat reminiscent of the church balcony scene in that movie drops down from the gallery and they are reconciled. However, at the reception the other Sister Carla declares her intention to marry Danny which throws her mother into a panic and a pivotal moment in this family's life is precipitated. From Elizabeth's perspective Carla "can do better". From Carla's perspective she can't do better because no matter how long she waits she can't be better. "But I know how to do some things-and I can love! And Daniel loves me". Elizabeth shouts "But I just don't think he can take care of you!" "We can take care of each other!", replies Carla.

Earlier in the story, Elizabeth has expressed her unease and sense of failure as a parent, "When you are young you are judged for whom you are but when you become a parent you are judged for whom you are AND how well your children are doing"!

These are telling moments in a story about what it means to be human. The back drop of wealth and privilege highlights rather than conceals that question. The Tates are "old money" and the performance standards are high but it is the marginalized child with "social adjustment problems" who leads them (and us) to the truth. The closing scene leaves us to chuckle and ponder what we already may know; Is The Kingdom of God composed mostly of Type A personalities? See Matthew 6:25-34.

In his No Man Is An Island Thomas Merton writes, "In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in God and to do whatever God wills according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of God's reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with." (p.120)