Nebraska

Damn you Golden Globes and Oscars! Damn you to hell!!! I had totally planned on skipping both Nebraska and Philomena in the theater because they both looked so boring that you’d rather spend 2 hours watching David Blaine masturbate while he’s sitting in a box and calling it magic. A black and white movie about a senile old man who wants to walk to Nebraska so he can collect his prize money? So just so I’m clear on this; it’s in black and white, it’s about old people who are basically waiting to die, and it takes place in Nebraska??? Why not just have them speak in French, add subtitles, and incorporate random fog in every other scene!

Alexander Payne is known for making painful movies (pun intended) that never seem to end. He has become quite the master of taking a moderately interesting story and dragging it out for so long that the viewer ends up begging him to either finally end the movie or simply end their life; but just in some way please show some mercy! "Please have a party! Feed us drinks! Get us laid!! Aaaarrggh!" Sideways was funny in parts but I can only watch middle aged people talk over wine for so long before  I am reminded of my awful days in country Texas where we drank in the middle of fields to pass the time. And The Descendants and About Schmidt were quite possibly the worst movies ever made! But here I go again, being slowly tortured by film simply because I can’t watch the Oscars without having adequate ammunition to make fun of everything nominated.

Well I’d give you a quick summary of what this movie is all about but honestly I already did.  Bruce Dern plays Woody Grant, an aging alcoholic who gets one of those You’re A Millionaire notices in the mail but for some reason he can’t seem to get it in his head that it’s a scam. His headstrong wife refuses to drive him from Montana to Nebraska to collect it, so he spends day after day walking the highway trying to get there; that is until a state trooper sees him and ends his daily attempt at it. It gets so frustrating for the family that they start talk of putting him into a home but the younger son David (Will Forte) finally caves in and decides to give him a lift. Along the way he hopes that they can finally bond since Dern was never much of a talker and didn’t spend too much time with them when they were kids.

But as they are on their way, an accident occurs and they decide to spend some time with their old family and friends in Hawthorne Nebraska, the town where Dern and his wife grew up and met one another. As word spreads of Dern's new found fortune, he becomes the talk of the town and naturally vultures start to come out of the woodwork.

I will say this, this movie was the funniest movie Payne has made since Election. It’s still just a bit too long but Dern is amazing as the old alcoholic whose sole purpose in life is to collect his prize money so he can buy a new truck and a new compressor. Oh and along the way grabbing a beer whenever he damn well pleases. He honestly doesn’t say much but when he does it’s usually confusion followed by something golden! And where he leaves off, that’s where his wife picks up. She is annoying at first but she starts to grow on you as the movie rolls along and you see that she truly does care for her husband and her sons and that she’s not simply an old nagging hag. The trip to the graveyard is probably the highlight of the move.

Payne does an excellent job of summing up life in the country, a place where all you have to do to pass the time is watch television, eat, drink, and engage in mundane conversation. Everyone knows everyone else and their business and you find yourself settling for certain people or situations simply because there really is no other option.

I rate this movie as FRESH mainly because of the attempted robbery scene involving the two fat Jed Clampett twins. You have to see it to believe it.