Synopsis
Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels), the patriarch of an eccentric Brooklyn family, claims to have been a famous novelist but is now a teacher. His wife Joan (Laura Linney) discovers a literary talent of her own, and it breaks up the family, leaving the two teenage sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), 16, and Frank (Owen Kline), 12, divided between their parents. The wife starts an affair with her younger son's tennis coach, while the husband starts sleeping with a student whom his elder son is courting.
The experience is a tender, funny and ultimately moving coming-of-age for Walt and a tortuously premature one for Frank. The emotional tensions and strains that emerge during this difficult period for the Berkmans are given a remarkably subtle and nuanced portrayal as a family in transition learns to redefine itself.
Film Information
- Genre: Drama
- Director: Noah Baumbach
- Written By: Noah Baumbach
- Starring: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Halley Feiffer, William Baldwin, Anna Paquin, and Alexandra Daddario
- Running Time: 88 minutes, approx.
- MPAA Rating: R
- Language: English
- Official Site
Reviews
"It's a rare film that can be convincingly tender, bitterly funny, and ruthlessly cutting over the course of fewer than 90 minutes. The Squid and the Whale not only manages this, it also contains moments that sock you with all three qualities at the same time."
- Glenn Kenny, Premiere
"Treacherously funny and wrenchingly sad."
- Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer
"Steering clear of phony melodrama and indie pretense, Baumbach captures a crisis in one family's life that, though it shakes the foundation, leaves all four Berkmans drifting toward highs and lows unknown, each of them only dimly aware that, no matter what the movies tell us, we never really come of age."
- Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune
"In hovering, The Squid and the Whale becomes its own realistic display of family entropy, as cautionary as it is educational."
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend."
- Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor
Showtimes
- Wednesday, December 21st
5:45 pm, 7:45 pm - Thursday, December 22nd
2:30 pm, 5:00 pm - Friday, December 23rd
2:30 pm, 5:00 pm - Saturday, December 24th
11:00 am, 1:15 pm - Monday, December 26th
12:00 pm, 2:30 pm, 5:00 pm, 7:15 pm - Tuesday, December 27th
2:30 pm, 5:00 pm, 7:15 pm - Wednesday, December 28th
2:30 pm, 5:00 pm - Thursday, December 29th
2:30 pm, 7:30 pm - Friday, December 30th
5:00 pm, 9:30 pm - Saturday, December 31st
11:00 am, 3:30 pm - Sunday, January 1st
1:30 pm, 3:30 pm - Monday, January 2nd
5:00 pm, 7:00 pm - Tuesday, January 3rd
2:30 pm