Dinner in America

Always a joy when low expectations yield joyous results. This is simply wonderful. Something to offend everyone. A junkie arsonist punk singer trashes a bunch of people's lives, encounters a socially stunted chick being bullied, wants to use her for his own ends, slowly discovers she is more like him than he realises and they fall in love. Zero sentimental crap and a bizarre happy ending.

This is close to zero budget and with a cast of no names. No requirement for explosions or car crashes. Well written script with real characters. Dripping with vicious sarcasm. Wonderful. More please. I loved this so much.

This movie tries to do everything it can to make the audience want to switch off in the first part. It presents you with a terrible, manipulative person who'd be a danger to anybody getting close to him, and then puts him on a collision course with someone you instinctively want to protect from him.

You're just going to have to trust me that there's more that needs to unfold. Beautiful things are going to happen. It's messy and trashy, and it needs to be. You'll even end up feeling a little bit bad for having those protective feelings at first, which is going to feel unthinkable when you're in the early stages of the story. Learning what Patty wants and seeing her find it is an absolute joy.

It's a great film with some surprisingly subtle things to say about freedom and what it means to invent yourself.

I was fortunate enough to catch this film at Sundance. It is absolutely wonderful. The style of directing is very clean and stylized, and the humor used is biting but not trite. It's the perfect mixture.

Simon and Patty are misfits, forgotten or ignored by society. They are pushed aside. Simon is the kind of person who fiercely lives his life out loud by the code of punk rock, uncaring about what others think about him, but he has a good heart. He is often in the wrong situation at the wrong time and forced to make the best out of the options laid before him. Patty is often made fun of by her peers or complete strangers for no reason. She lives her life almost in secret, letting go and losing herself in her room to her music as she dances without abandon. From the outside, she's the last person you'd expect to be a punk rocker.

These two meet and what ensues is a beautiful, touching, and humorous journey about seeing someone else for who they truly are--learning to look past whatever first impressions that may have been formed and seeing the person inside of them who is often lost to others or afraid to come forth. By finding each other, Simon and Patty find themselves. Go see this movie!

Quirky, offbeat comedy centered around two intensely unconventional characters. Much of the film is spent passive aggressively or all-out aggressively railing against banality and status quo in the American suburbs but there is also a sweet, heartwarming core and a lot of charm. It did feel a little long in the 2nd half without quite as much momentum as the 1st but overall this was a really enjoyable and unusual film.

I tuned in for Kyle, who I have seen and liked in other things. The first half of this movie had me squirming, with the opening scene being particularly hard to watch; if you're squeamish you may want to avert your eyes. Also there is a LOT of profanity. It was hard for me to see all the ill-treatment that Patty endures in her daily life (what's in all those pill boxes anyway?) I thought, do I really need to see more of this? But by the halfway point I was thoroughly invested. The "dinner in America" scenes around the family table were a hoot-did anybody recognize their own childhood here? (Take it down a notch!) Throw Simon in the mix and the whole household is upended! But a touching tenderness develops when Patty and Simon discover their hidden relationship with each other. I feel like Patty could have ditched her meds after that: Simon is her new feel-good, and it's nice to see Patty shine like that.