This is based on a memoir by Jeannette Walls and, given that,
I would expect most scenes to be believable.
However, I found it hard to believe that things
happened as presented in so many scenes.
For examle, early on Jeanette's family (father Rex, mother Rose, and their four young daughters) is travelling in an old beat-up 1955 Ford when Rex decides give vent to some sense of defiant freedom by veering off the road, crashing through a fence and hooting and hollering as he drives hundreds of yards into a dessicated southwestern landscape. Having gotten his family stuck in the middle of nowhere Rex says how great it is--they can camp out there and have a great view of the stars when the sun goes down. In the meantime Rose has found a fascinating Joshua tree that, being an artist, she must paint immediately. How would such a scene ultimately end? Somehow they would have to get the car out of there and have it repaired--at what price freedom, huh? And, in their apparent destitution, where will they get the money to get the car back on the highway? This scene set the mood for the whole movie for me, showing Rex to be an irresponsible ass with some idealistic sense of freedom that allows him to put himself above less liberated souls. And this is Rex at his best, he only gets worse as the movie goes along and we become familiar with the depths of his alcoholism.
I give the movie credit in its convincing presentation of Rex as being a troubled drunk with little redeeming value. What I could not understand was how any of his family could tolerate him for a second. However he apparently had some quality that the family on occassion would find appealing, a quality that was totally lost on me. Unfortunately for my being able to appreciate this movie, Rex's appeal was at the heart of the family dynamic.
Most all scenes are amped up for maximum emotional response and the music cues us as to how we should respond. In one scene Rex returns home from a drunk with a six inch gash in his arm and he coaches his daughter to put in stitches while he braves the pain with no anesthetic. Really? No antiseptic even? What does Rex do when he turns up with a major infection? He could not possibly lower himself to go to an emergency room in a hospital that is there primarily to put money into the pockets of rich doctors.
In an emotional final scene Rex presents Jeanette with a scrap book where he has saved every piece of her writing. Given the total chaos of the family's vagabond lifestyle and Rex's inability to focus on anything long enough to push it through, introducing this unbelievable scrap book antic for a purely emotional punch at the end of Rex's life was insulting to me.
For a movie that is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical this had more the feeling of fiction than of truth.
For examle, early on Jeanette's family (father Rex, mother Rose, and their four young daughters) is travelling in an old beat-up 1955 Ford when Rex decides give vent to some sense of defiant freedom by veering off the road, crashing through a fence and hooting and hollering as he drives hundreds of yards into a dessicated southwestern landscape. Having gotten his family stuck in the middle of nowhere Rex says how great it is--they can camp out there and have a great view of the stars when the sun goes down. In the meantime Rose has found a fascinating Joshua tree that, being an artist, she must paint immediately. How would such a scene ultimately end? Somehow they would have to get the car out of there and have it repaired--at what price freedom, huh? And, in their apparent destitution, where will they get the money to get the car back on the highway? This scene set the mood for the whole movie for me, showing Rex to be an irresponsible ass with some idealistic sense of freedom that allows him to put himself above less liberated souls. And this is Rex at his best, he only gets worse as the movie goes along and we become familiar with the depths of his alcoholism.
I give the movie credit in its convincing presentation of Rex as being a troubled drunk with little redeeming value. What I could not understand was how any of his family could tolerate him for a second. However he apparently had some quality that the family on occassion would find appealing, a quality that was totally lost on me. Unfortunately for my being able to appreciate this movie, Rex's appeal was at the heart of the family dynamic.
Most all scenes are amped up for maximum emotional response and the music cues us as to how we should respond. In one scene Rex returns home from a drunk with a six inch gash in his arm and he coaches his daughter to put in stitches while he braves the pain with no anesthetic. Really? No antiseptic even? What does Rex do when he turns up with a major infection? He could not possibly lower himself to go to an emergency room in a hospital that is there primarily to put money into the pockets of rich doctors.
In an emotional final scene Rex presents Jeanette with a scrap book where he has saved every piece of her writing. Given the total chaos of the family's vagabond lifestyle and Rex's inability to focus on anything long enough to push it through, introducing this unbelievable scrap book antic for a purely emotional punch at the end of Rex's life was insulting to me.
For a movie that is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical this had more the feeling of fiction than of truth.