Stuck in Love

What do you expect from a melodrama? Let’s be honest, usually we watch them because they are great tearjerkers. There are almost always a happy ending and in that moment most of us burst into tears.

This one is not so much different, but it doesn’t make this film bad. So, famous writer Bill Borgens is trying to get through hard period in his life. His wife Erica left him for a younger man. He is spying on her and her new life. He hasn’t written a word since their divorce and they have been apart for three years. He has a strange habit setting a place for her at the Thanksgiving table but she never comes.

Their children are also going through some difficulties. Samantha is in college trying to become a writer. She hates her mom because she left and cheated on her dad. Rusty fell in love with a girl who has a huge baggage of her own problems. But everything changes one year, on Thanksgiving, when Sam comes home with news that her book has been published. Family reconnects while dealing with problems.

“Stuck in love” is a great example of modern family life with its ups and downs. I like this film so much. The acting was perfect; all characters were live and vivid. If you don’t believe me just watch it yourself, and I guarantee you’ll like it. 

The Truman Show

Imagine that the world around you is just an illusion, favorite things and places are the scenery, your closest are just good matched actors, perfectly fulfilling their roles. Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it?

Such is the life of 30 year-old insurance agent Truman Burbank, who lives in a puppet town Seeheaven. Literally from Truman’s birth a lot of cameras are constantly following him, imprinting his every single move, and the recording is broadcasted worldwide, but Truman (by the way, performed by Jim Carrey) didn’t realize that it's all a show, and he’s the main star in it.

A hint at what is going on to him gives his failed love Lauren / Sylvia. She utters the phrase: «Everything – it’s a lie, deception and full bullshit, and we're all playing our roles!».

In other words, after Shakespeare, the hero of «The Truman Show» finding in the end that the whole reality around him was really made-up, could repeat the famous phrase: «All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women, meerely players». Although bearing in mind the given fact that the series meets all the canons of a soap opera, it can be paraphrase without hesitations: «All the world’s a show, and all the men and women, meerely marionettes».

Watching this masterpiece, I began to feel a mild paranoia. The thought that you can be the second «Truman Burbank» got the wind-up!

In my opinion tough irony (uncovered cynicism of all the film crew) and a personal drama in the life of the protagonist (miserable person just wanting to know the truth) are masterfully interwoven with each other.

I’m not considered to be a big fan of Jim Carrey, but in this film for the first he shows that he is able to play profound roles, full of tragedy and doom.