I've been on quite the Netflix binge recently. Due to the absolutely ridiculous weather that we've been having (Seriously?! A 40 degree swing in less than 16 hours? Really?! Highs in the negative degrees? What IS this place?), I just hang out mostly and watch movies that are streaming on Netflix. I recently watched one called "Stuck In Love", which I actually really liked.
I want to caveat by saying that I have very low expectations of Netflix, since I'm usually stuck watching ridiculous things like "Biozombies from Outer Space Part 5" or something like that (usually it's recommended by Max, which I think is absolutely ridiculous because they sunk a bunch of money into this thing that is very unlikely to actually tell me what I want to watch, especially because the most recently watched list is probably so crazy varied that it would be hard to pin down anything I like to watch). ANYwho.
So Stuck In Love focuses on a man who is a famous author. He has two children, an older girl and a younger boy, who he is desperately hoping will become authors as well some day. He has recently divorced his wife (~1 year ago) and is sleeping with the (married) neighbor down the street while not so secretly hoping that his wife will come back. From the children's perspective, it's a movie about growing, trying to figure out who you are and, in the son's case, learning just how freeing/awesome/terrifying it is to be a young adult and actually be able to make your own decisions for the first time in your life. Watching it as a 28 year old, I felt strangely torn between the two main roles in the movie. Was I supposed to relate more to the guy's kids? They're growing and maturing and trying to figure out their lives much like I am, but at the same time, I'm a little too old to try to pretend that I'm as naive as they are. Yet, I am too young to really relate to the man in the movie-- I'm not a divorcee, I don't have children, I'm not left pining over a life of what could have been (okay, I lied, I am constantly agonizing over the decisions I've made in my life and trying to figure out if I made the "right" ones, so I guess maybe I am more naive than I think). But there's something about his life that calls me to me as well-- he's lonely because he is thrust into an unfamiliar situation where he just isn't sure what to do, he is constantly feeling adrift by not being able to relate to those that he's supposedly closest to, and he feels like he's in limbo between what was and what could be. I can relate to all those things, and I haven't even had my mid-life crisis yet.
Regardless, I would highly recommend this movie. It's filled with the happy parts that make you long for your family, sad parts that make you think back to the first time you fell in love (I heard the first cut is the deepest, or so the 80s tell me) and some truly awesomely awkward parts that make you miss those weird growing years while silently relishing the fact that those are behind you. It does have a happy ending.
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