Greetings,
I have always been quite envious of families wherein the gift of writing seems to run. As far as I know, I am the only writer in my closest DNA group. When I began my work long ago in my teenage years, I wished I had someone to motivate me to do it long before I started, like a parent who was also a writer and wanted me to follow in their footsteps. I suppose I can look at it in a good light because I have never had to deal with it. Grass is greener and whatnot. But, perhaps, it wouldn't be 100% super. Well, a family full of writers is our main focus in the movie Stuck in Love.
Stuck in Love is a 2012 movie, which actually had the working title of Writers. How appropriate. This is a story of the Borgens, a broken family trying to come to terms with the changes they've been enduring. The father is Bill Borgens, played by Greg Kinnear, a novelist who has done his best to raise his children to be writers no matter what. He has been having trouble with life since his wife, Erica, played by Jennifer Connelly, left him a few years previous for another man. They have two children, 19-year-old Sam, played by Lily Collins, and 16-year-old Rusty, played by Nat Wolff. Sam recently got news that her first book will be published and shares this with her father and brother at Thanksgiving, though she won't tell her mom, as she resents her for leaving. Her parents failure of a marriage has left her with a disdain for committed relationships. Rusty, however, still talks to his mom, and, also unlike his sister, he is kind of a young romantic. He also writes and is a massive fan of Stephen King. And when it comes to his ex-wife, Bill is holding out hope that she will return, and he does have a reason for waiting, which we eventually discover.
Throughout the movie, these three main characters all have relationships, in one form or another. Bill has the least meaningful one, having regular hookups with a woman named Tricia, played by Kristen Bell. Honestly, I don't really know what the point of this character is. She's barely in the movie, and when she's there, she's just kind of...there, if that makes sense. Although, when she and Bill aren't...doing stuff, they seem to have a legit friendship. Sam meets a guy named Lou, played by Logan Lerman, who wants to start a serious relationship with her, of course, so she tries desperately to keep him at arm's length, if not further. Still, when she sees the crisis with which he is dealing in his personal life, her heart begins to soften a bit. Rusty has fallen in love with a girl named Kate, played by Lianna Liberato, an actress to whom I gave much praise in The Last Sineater. He has, in fact, become so infatuated with her that he can't see that she is quite a troubled girl, but the experiences he endures jump start him into realizing that his love can't magically fix everything.
I really do, for the most part, enjoy the cast of this film. Although, I must admit that all these characters, while I didn't hate any of them, can grate on your nerves at times. I think it's because they are so set in their ways, but you can see that they are how they are because they are very wounded, one way or another. You may groan or roll your eyes at some of their behavior, but you know there's a reason for it. There's a difference between characters that are flawed and characters that are straight-up unlikable. Not every movie gets that, but this one does.
At its heart, I think Stuck in Love is about these people being stuck in their idea of what love is or is not, and their opening themselves, for better or worse, to seeing outside their usual box. That ends up bringing some pain but also healing some pain, and we see that things only have a chance at being fixed if everything is out in the open. Everyone telling the truth and letting their guards down is what puts things on track to maybe being mended.
I don't know what the critics said about this movie, and I can see how not everyone would be into it. But I found it very interesting and subtly entertaining. It does have some comedy peppered in there, but it's mostly dramatic. Some people may call it "melodramatic". I suppose I understand that, too, but I didn't think they went over the top. I mean, this is a movie about artistic and creative people. Sometimes our freak outs are a little less...understated. It's just how we are. Anyway, I just love seeing a story about how one event can affect so many people in so many different ways. Not least of all in someone's writing.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
