Last week we watched two movies that could not possibly have been more different from one another in their impact, although both began with the potential to be great entertainment, each in its own way. Friday evening we saw Hit and Run, starring Dax Shepard, Kristin Bell, and Tom Arnold. A couple of nights later we watched The Magic of Belle Isle, with Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen.
Hit and Run could have worked well as a drama, a typical chase movie, or as a comedy. It was presented as a comedy and could have been hilarious, especially with the fine acting by Tom Arnold, but it was so crude that it's hard to imagine that anyone needs to use the f-bomb that often. My children at four years old had a more varied vocabulary than the principle actors of this movie. In the interests of cultural realism, one could accept a few less-than-desireable words but this was extreme to the point of ridicule. Language should not detract or distract from the plot or the calibre of the acting in a movie. Enough said.
The Magic of Belle Isle was an entirely different experience. It also had the potential to use crude language but chose not to. Morgan Freeman played a cynical, alcoholic, embittered-about-life writer. One could well imagine that such a character's language might, in real life, be pretty raw at times. The rawness was well portrayed without the use of crude language and left me enchanted with elements like the plot, the acting, the cinematography, and the dramatic potential.
This movie created a space for all the real emotions of life, whereas Hit and Run exaggerated them, making a caricature of human responses to challenge or stress. I would highly recommend The Magic of Belle Isle, if you're looking for a real story about real people who deal with life and sadness in honest and real ways. And a happy ending, of course!
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