All the Real Girls

source: All the Real Girls

This movie is a long, slow, earnest melodrama about small town twenty-somethings struggling to...you know...find themselves...get somewhere...grow up...ah, hell, I have no idea, really. The movie seems like it was shot through a thin layer of maple syrup, it's photographed so that we are stuck in that eternal autumn that permeates most small-town melodramas. All oranges, browns, and golds. The characters meander through their lives with little direction and no visible means of support. There's a factory which none of the characters seem to work in. Zooey Deschanel plays a very confused girl who is a virgin when she starts dating Paul Schneider. Schneider is a player (that's right, all of a sudden - totally out of nowhere - there are at least two babes in this town that we see Schneider has - inexplicably - laid. They wear professional makeup and look like the have their hair done in New York). He falls for Deschanel and doesn't screw her because he's a changed guy. It's his new self. So what does Deschanel's character do? SPOILER- MAJOR SPOILER - She screws some guy she just met at a weekend party at a lake. The whole rest of the film is devoted to the pain and inchoate ramblings of Schneider and the rest of the cast, all of whose lives seem to be hopeless and in need of doses of stiff, tough-sounding and superficial philosophies which, it appears, everyone can spout. Nothing like dead-end stultifying, small-town life to make a person a sage. The worst offenders are the virtually tongue-tied ramblings of Deschanel who can't, for the life of her - or any of the rest of us - speak in the simplest declarative sentences. While there are some rare moments of insight (the moments are rare, not the insights) in this movie, for the most part it is an incredibly self-indulgent, plodding little film dotted with stoner non-sequiturs, annoying and pointless little scenes where people, for no apparent reason, find themselves sitting in abandoned cars spouting puerile Hallmark Moments conjectures for no other reason than that the filmmakers apparently thought that would give it an art-house feel. Deschanel is fine as the wounded/wounding girl, Schneider is stiff, pasty, and dull as the boyfriend (he also wrote the story).

This was the worst piece of crap movie I've ever watched. The only reason I watched the whole thing was the hope that it would skip ahead in time when the characters had finally gone to elementary school and learned the English language. I wish I could have rated it a zero, but 1 was the lowest. If this was your life, or you connected with this movie in some way, I feel very sad for you. I look forward to never seeing another movie this bad ever again. Did this movie actually have a script? The actors didn't seem to know what to say half the time, and when they did say something, you dreamed of the moment that they would shut it. I've tried real hard, but I don't think I could ever express how bad this movie was. This movie made Stolen Summer look like an Oscar contender.

While watching this movie, I realized that the movie embodied what it is like for real people to fall in love in the real world. I also realized that I don't relate well to real people. They are shallow, stupid, and say the dumbest things. The timing and writing led to dialogue that was almost unbearable to watch. The characters were self-serving and oblivious to the existence to any other human beings' experiences in the world. Stupid people saying stupid things while making stupid mistakes. The only moral that could conceivably be taken away from this movie is, "Don't fall in love with nineteen year old girls!" If you watch the movie, consider yourself warned, but keep an eye out for the two legged dog. He had me crying laughing.

I don't think that words can aptly describe how painfully bad this movie is but I'll give it a try. I wanted to see All the Real Girls because I'd read several reviews that were very favorable but after sitting through just thirty seconds of the opening scene I knew I had made a bad choice. It's hard to critique this movie because everything was so excruciatingly awful. The script was boring and the dialogue was contrived and not at all clever. There was not one funny line in the entire movie, the few attempts at what was supposed to be humor failed miserably. The story line was poorly constructed and the plot (if you could call it that) was also boring. The acting was certainly not stellar but I'm not sure how good it could have possibly been considering how shallow and underdeveloped all of the characters were. The scenery was indeed quite beautiful but the style in which it was incorporated into the movie was very heavy-handed and mundane. I cannot emphasize enough how horrible this movie was, it's an absolute embarrassment. I feel like I was robbed of the $10 I paid for the ticket not to mention the hour and a half of my life that was wasted (incidentally it was possibly the longest hour and a half I've ever experienced). Definitely do not waste your money by seeing this movie in the theater; it is utterly devoid of any redeeming attributes that might have made it even slightly worthwhile.

We chose this movie based upon a good review in local paper. I knew we were in trouble when some friends leaving the film said it was slow and very disappointing. They were right. It was the most boring movie I've ever seen. No, to be honest, Moulin Rouge was worse. If you want to suffer great pain, don't miss All the Real Girls! The lines in the script make little sense. The story isn't funny. No one in the theater laughed (maybe a chuckle here and there). When it was over there was stunned silence--"How could a movie be this bad?", I figured the audience must be thinking. The male lead seemed to have an IQ of 45 for a while, then he would sound like his IQ was 150, then back to 45, etc. Nice scenery though. Bottom line: It stunk big time!

... It captures perfectly the awkwardness of really loving somebody, but not being sure how to take it a stage further without destroying what's been built up. As a viewer, you'll most likely believe in the central relationship and not want it to hit problems; because YOU wouldn't want it to end, either, if you were in their situation. It's underscored throughout by a wonderfully gentle soundtrack, too. There are long sequences of elegiac wistfulness; staring out over beautiful scenery. With 9 films out of ten that try this tactic, I would get impatient, choosing to believe that this is a director's underhanded way of trying to pad out the runtime. Not here. The sense of loss evoked by the visuals and the mournful score is absolutely key to the films emotional impact. If for some reason you're not tuned into the mood; then I can imagine this style would be annoying; but I found myself completely immersed, and it was great. This is the first film from David Gordon Green I've come across, but I shall be eagerly on the lookout for the rest of his stuff in the future, based on this wonderful evidence.

In reading the jacket of this movie at my local Blockbuster, I was under the impression that this was the "indie" version of the rebel-boy-meets-innocent-girl-love-ensues-problems-happen genre of film. So many are so sugar coated these days, I thought this one would be different. Yeah, different in a very bad way! The flow of this movie is as choppy as Paul's speech patterns. The movie bounces all over the place. It reminded me of when I was first learning to drive a stick shift. FORWARD-->JERK! FORWARD-->JERK! And the notion that Paul is the casanova/scrog-dog of the town is just laughable. How could he possibly sweet-talk all of those girls into having sex if he can't put more than 3 words together at a time? Wouldn't he get stuck at "Hey, how about..."? I don't care how small of a town one one may live in, "Local Idiot" and "Local Womanizer" are not titles bestowed onto just one man. I thought the "making of" bonus feature on the DVD would give some insight. But alas, the director talks just like his characters and no real clarity is given. I don't have a problem with movie characters talking in "real life" language, but when they all come off as mildly retarded, it made me wonder if the local mill is dumping something into the water.

A perfect movie to watch if you're in the mood to just chill out and watch the sunset but it's already dark. It offers the meditative sensation of Baraka combined with a nearly pitch perfect portrayal of a small town slice of life topped off with an inherently interesting 'young love' story. My only thoughts for the filmmaker (and in my opinion a significant oversight) would be to figure out how to wrap up the story without affecting the tone... the last quarter felt tedious as you began to expect the traditional dramatic/thematic resolution and therefore anticipate the number of scenes to come; which work best when you're not intellectually involved but emotionally - or even better - intuitively involved.... once the brain clicks in, the experience becomes of one of anticipation and with a film like this, impatience.

Low budget and low tech, director David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls" first struck viewer nerves at Sundance and it will do so everywhere. Set in Appalachia with shots of the beautiful mountains juxtaposed with a town that never knew prosperity and is left behind in today's North Carolina where the Research Triangle is where it's at, this is a truly affecting and universal story of first love. It's told honestly, without either director's affectation or cast overacting. The story has soul. Zooey Deschanel plays, outstandingly, a girl, "Noel," returned from boarding school where she's been since age twelve. She plays the trombone and doesn't want to go to college. She's never had a real job and seems not to have acquired much if any ambition or sophistication while away from home. She's a virgin and it's clear that hardly any of her contemporaries who didn't leave town are even remotely chaste. In fact, the suggestion is that most sleep with virtually all the young guys. Including two, "Paul," played by Paul Schneider and his best friend "Tip," portrayed with a brooding intensity by Shea Wigham. Tip is also Noel's brother and protective of her he is. So when his formerly carefree gangbanging bud, Paul, falls head over heels for Noel and she reciprocates he has issues. The story is universal: the joy and pain of a serious first love, the pitfalls of communication, the unawareness of how words told and events improvidently related can be like mines going off. The simple but inevitable price exacted by inexperience and not just sexual. There is a quiet and achingly familiar reality to Noel's and Paul's relationship. Anyone honest will recognize himself or herself from some early life. Anyone who genuinely doesn't has missed some pain but at a price. Director Green unflinchingly unravels the mysteries of growing wiser, a necessary but in some ways sad departure from innocence. Without drugs or crime or a social commentary on the moribund economy of a gorgeous region, the film focuses on the two young people and their families and friends. They are recognizable, worthy of caring about. When Paul, trying to understand Noel's not wholly consistent emotions and actions, blurts out that he's not that smart, a number of people in the audience chortled and several yelled out "No, you're not." They didn't understand that his comment wasn't self-denigratory but a nakedly honest confession of confusion and fear of loss. Haven't we all experienced that? 8/10.