In the movie Flipped, the actor Bryce Loski is undoubtedly a character whose "whole is greater than its parts". He is naive and innocent, like most teenagers, carefree. The biggest worry in life is how to get rid of the girl who always haunts him and makes him lose face in front of his classmates. Although he made a lot of mistakes and even broke the girl's heart, fortunately, he found and had the courage to face and admit his feelings. After all kinds of misunderstandings and rejections, he was still standing on the lawn of the girl's house, rolling up his trousers and digging a hole for planting a tree with a shovel. At that time, he was no longer the Bryce he used to be.
Juli Baker reminds me of River Phoenix's Chris in Walk With Me. The poverty of the family made her grow up prematurely, showing extraordinary delicacy and maturity than her peers. She will climb the big tree and wait for the sunset to cherish the cool wind blowing on her face. She will study the hatching process of the chicks and therefore respect life. She will observe the people around her sensitively and feel their inner emotions through their words and deeds. , she will treat life more positively after witnessing the suffering of her uncle. I once said that Chris and Gordie in "Walk With Me" actually experienced a kind of "forced growth", and social and family factors acted as external forces to drag them towards maturity that was not their age. Whether it's Stephen King's original "The Corpse" or Rob Reiner's "Stay With Me," this growth seems a little pessimistic and heavy. However, in this Flipped, Juli Baker, who was also forced to grow up, was always optimistic and cheerful. She was able to turn all the negative obstacles she encountered along the way into another kind of positive emotion, so that she, who was originally plain looking and had a difficult family, finally " The whole is greater than the parts", and get the happiness and joy you deserve.
In addition to the outstanding two protagonists and their two friends in "Walk With Me", their parents, brothers, teachers and other adults seem to play negative roles, which is impressive. The adult supporting roles in Flipped are relatively bleak.
Bryce's grandfather was supposed to be a great character, but in the end he stopped in nostalgia for his dead wife; Bryce's father is one of the few or even the only negative character in the whole film. He despised the poor neighbor's feelings for his children. I don't care at all. At the end of the movie, Bryce's father just mentioned that Bryce's father has regrets and unwillingness for music or a certain period of time in the past. However, it is this casual and deliberate plot that portrays this character's life as "the whole is less than the parts". As Juli said, although he is bright on the surface, something in his heart has festered; Juli's mentally retarded uncle is completely the opposite. Although he has an intellectual disability and cannot take care of himself, because of a brother who loves him, he can live in the world. Eating ice cream one after another on his birthday and playing puzzles with a windmill made Juli finally understand what Grandpa Bryce said, that the whole is greater than the parts of life.
Throughout the film, Juli and Bryce's narration leads to different perspectives on the same event. But since Bryce is always the more innocent and naive one, his narration is a little more boring than Juli's, and it's more about describing events, and then Juli's narration fills in the emotion. This creates the illusion that the subjective point of view of the film is always Bryce, and Juli's narration is just explaining the event. In addition, the overly detailed and repetitive description of the emotional entanglement between the two in the second half of the film is also slightly procrastinated, but the setting where the two narrations are combined into one at the end of the film is quite brilliant.
Rob Reiner seems to have a soft spot for that era, both "Walk With Me" and the interlude in this film are from that era, but Flipped's score is better, and several piano pieces are very beautiful.
Madeline Carroll is very good. Although she looks mediocre, she succeeds in performing the childish maturity. Of course, it is still far from being on a par with River Phoenix. As for Callan McAuliffe from Australia, she doesn't need acting skills at all. If such a cute face appears on the big screen, even if she can't perform, I believe that a large number of audiences will be thrilled.
For me, Flipped is a movie whose whole is greater than its parts. Although the story is thin and narrational in the second half of the movie, it seems a bit cumbersome and wordy, but what I like is those moving moments, the painting that Juli's father gave her, It was the little girl watching the sunset from the big tree, the figure of Bryce digging a hole in the grass, and the moment when Juli walked towards Bryce and their hearts finally intertwined and overlapped. Of course, it's also every shot of Callan McAuliffe's shy smile...
The extra star is for Mrs. Meng!
PS: I have infinite reverie about the "Basket Boy" auction... 囧
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