Bill

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Banks, Logan Lerman

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790623/

This review contains minor spoilers.

I talked about the trailer for this movie awhile back and I said that I would be looking forward to it, and I still was when I finally got the chance to see it. I would say it was just about as good as I had hoped but not any more so. I enjoyed watching it but there were some things that bothered me and while the jokes were for the most part good, some seemed to fall flat and the plot was somewhat anti-climactic for some reason, which you would not assume from seeing the trailer.

The intro of the movie was an amazing scene. It was funny, well shot and definetly did a great job of setting the stage. I was somewhat confused since at first I thought that Bill was a grown man still in high school which didn’t make sense, but it turns out he was just at the high school, and oddly enough wearing a suit which was similar to the uniform.

Speaking of adults playing high school students, I have no idea how old Jessica Alba was supposed to be in that movie. She is early 20’s in real life and looks that in the movie; she is also working when we first meet her so I just assumed her character was 22-25. But then at one point she is wearing what looks like a school uniform, and there is a surprising amount of back and forth flirting between herself and Logan’s character who I believe is 16 or so in the movie. They even hint at a sex scene between the two. So either Alba’s character is in high school, in which case she was not at all well cast for the part, or she is actually in her 20’s and the relationship is both creepy and illegal. Either way I was continually uncomfortable every time they interacted with each other.

The writing of the movie was decent; not amazing but still pretty good. I laughed a fair amount and there was definetly some empathy towards the characters (mostly just Bill, but that’s expected). Though the ending was not at all what I expected, but I won’t go into detail since it’s a rather large spoiler. And I am still not sure whether or not I thought it was a good way to end things.

The acting was good, Aaron Eckhart of course is always great, as is Elizabeth Banks. I didn’t like Alba, though mostly for the aforementioned age discrepancy. On the other hand, Logan was a surprising actor and I enjoyed his work. He’ll be someone to look out for in future movies. I did enjoy the movie so I would recommend it if you like comedies about awkward characters (not “Napoleon Dynamite” level of awkward but more “Welcome to Collingwood” style awkward, albeit the movies are extremely dissimilar).

~ by Hobbes on May 11, 2008.