The Good Life: 3 stars

(Now I'm just going to put a quick plot line before all of my reviews) PLOT: A young man with unique physical features, who lives in a small college football obsessed Nebraska town, meets a mysterious woman who helps him deal with the difficult situations in his life; and there are many.

At first I thought I was going to love The Good Life. Then about halfway through I thought I was going to be ambivalent. Then about ten minutes from the climax, I was pretty sure I was not going to not like it at all. Then it made an abrupt u-turn from where I thought the film was heading, and arrived in a much better place. If you stick around and wade through all of the murkiness, you’ll be rewarded with a much more upbeat message. The cinema lesson learned, which is one I preach all the time to my peers, is to not fight the film and try to figure everything out as you go along, but just let it take you for a ride.

The life lesson preached is just as simple and one I can’t give away here, otherwise there would be no point in watching the film. Unfortunately, one downfall of The Good Life is all the pain and suffering you have to sit through to get to the payoff. Once there you find something that isn’t too earth shattering. While it is a simple message, I for one feel it is an important one and worth spending ninety minutes of your life watching.

For a film that I stumbled upon on Netflix and hadn’t heard of previously, there were many surprising and very enjoyable actors that popped up. From Donal Logue to Bill Paxton to Patrick Fugit to Zooey Deschanel to Harry Dean Stanton, everyone seems very comfortable and laid back. Chris Klein’s washed up and psychotic football player that never made it, at times seems a little forced, but it’s forgivable. Overall, the performances are very good. The writing, while strong overall, can be hokey at times. The main character always has an appropriate and quaint “They say…” story to explain how everyone is feeling in a poetic way. I have the feeling I would have eaten this up when I was nineteen, but older and wiser it just all feels like a little much all at once. The film does have it’s tender and honest moments and some very strong cinematography and pacing. Overall the good outweighs the bad in The Good Life and it is definitely worth the melancholy journey. Wait a second. That is exactly the point the filmmakers are trying to make about life in general, and I just substituted the title of the movie for the word life. So did this review just justify the film? Were the bad elements intentional to prove a point? I just blew my own mind.