fedor8 Pedophilia, Solondz's lifelong obsession, strikes again. Pedophilia peppered with hot lashes of steamy incestuous insinuations? Even better, as far as he is concerned; that REALLY gets Todd's blood going. I can half-picture him (not that I want to) masturbating while he writes these pervy "artistic" indie screenplays. Could it be that this weak, ugly little delta male has been tortured by wet-dreams and lonely man-on-boy illegal porn films his whole adult life? Perhaps not; he insists he only uses the subject "as a metaphor". Solondz is a talented film-maker, highly original, and funny – when he wants to be. I'd prefer not to think of him as a pervert asking society to show more kindness toward child-molesters, as if Western society hasn't already lost itself in its futile/laughable attempts to deny the existence of inherent evil. (You know those bewildered Marxists: society causes evil, not individuals themselves.)Did Todd want LDW to be funny? I hope not, for our sake; because if this is what his humour has developed into, there's little to expect from his next movies. In that sense he reminds me of Mike Leigh, whose themes and style are similar. Leigh used to make funny comedy/dramas (a difficult feat), but eventually got too serious, far too pretentious, eventually dropping comedy altogether in favour of dreary, preachy drama. Or did I mean to say lazy? Drama is easier to write than comedy; any putz can invent characters that weep on each other's shoulders and expect the same from the luckless viewers. LDW doesn't have any moments that will have you laughing, or even chuckling. "Happiness", for which this is intended as a sequel (?), was both hilarious and original, a refreshing film when it came out. In hindsight, "Happiness" was Solondz at his creative high, much like Leigh with "Naked". LDW simply re-hashes the same themes, sans the humour. So pedophiles are people too? Who the hell cares. Quoting one of Billy's daft college pals: "child-molestation is so passé"; a troubling line that might just reflect some of Solondz's own devious attitudes.What's even more troubling, Todd might even be attempting to open our minds to the vague (and cretinous) notion/possibility that even terrorists might be as misunderstood and overly victimized, just like pedophiles. Certainly the posters of Che Guevara (a mass murderer: a fact 99% of the people reading this text are unaware of) and of a Palestinian kid standing in front of an Israeli tank, plus the retarded ramblings of the highly moronic pre-Bar-Mitzvah kid about 9/11 and forgiveness all seem to point in this direction; not nearly as rabidly and in-your-face blatantly/aggressively as a certain greedy buffoon by the name of Michael Moore, but it's there. Again, I hope I am wrong. If not, Solondz's decaying mind is enveloped in an even steeper moral and intellectual decline than I'd previously suspected. Still, it would be hardly surprising; the majority of society's more extreme misfits, outcasts and "freaks" are naturally – i.e. logically - drawn toward political extremism, and extremism in general. Just look at the higher echelons of Nazi Germany: as many sexual deviants there as the sick heart desires. Certainly most zit-faced, overweight film-buff nerds, riddled with self-loathing due to their sexual inadequacy and the shame of still living with their parents, are drawn toward Marxism, the other side of the lunatic coin. Perhaps Solondz got beaten up often as a child.The boy in "Happiness" behaves like a real kid, unlike the artificial Timmy whose reactions and utterances seem forced and absurd nearly all of the time; at one moment speaking/acting like an adult, the other like an imbecile. How predictable that he would eventually heed his mother's "advice" and scream when a man touches him. How utterly corny that his mother would actually end her relationship with Harvey instead of sorting out the ludicrous misunderstanding – which would happen in the real world. In fact, this plot-device was more worthy of a garbage TV-sitcom than a movie with such "lofty" aspirations. "Happiness" wasn't predictable – LDW was. Joy's husband killing himself: also predictable. "He knows that Bush and McCain are idiots". This, coming from a man who advocates understanding toward pedophiles – while using the "98% gene-pool incest-monkeys" analogy to subliminally justify sexual deviancy – this is practically a badge of honour for both of those politicians. The badge would say: "a deviant Hollywood depressive obsessed with pedophiles hates me". The scene with Joy playing a song on her guitar seems to have had only one purpose: to mention that "Vietnam was a mistake". Jesus H, Todd; that tired old left-wing shtick – in 2009?! That's the political equivalent to the comedic banana-peel fall. You hate war, we get it.Solondz has stated that the Iraq/Afghanistan wars initiated this script. "Life during wartime": you've got to be kidding me. I'm aware he's using the title to mean two completely separate things, but I can't get around the whiny/deluded suggestion that America-in-war and America-not-in-war are such distinct, separates beasts, as if shopping in K-Mart changes drastically when there's a war on. He ought to visit the Balkans some time. Or Angola. (In a time-machine.) Yet another clueless/naive all-war-is-bad-except-WW2 left-wing Western pacifist who provides no alternatives/solutions, but is quick to criticize all violence, jumping on the highly unoriginal Bush-bashing anti-war bandwagon. In fine company has he thereby placed himself: Madonna, Green Day, Sean Penn, Pink, Paris Hilton, and George Clooney; all intellectuals.Ally Sheedy (who's overrated) overplays it as if Nicholas Cage and John Travolta had personally coached her in the not-so-fine art of cinematic tom-foolery. Sillier still (though this isn't her fault) her character shifts gears without rhyme or reason. That character made very little sense, serving no purpose in the story except to give Todd a chance to have a go at Hollywood screenwriters (whom he presumably, and justifiably, probably considers sell-outs). Ironically, it seems Todd is heading that way too.

tieman64 "People can't help it if they're monsters." – Bill (Life During Wartime) Director Todd Solondz takes the various dysfunctional characters of his earlier film, "Happiness", recasts them, and places them in "Life During Wartime". This facial reshuffling then becomes an enquiry on Solondz's part: have these people changed? Are major personality or life changes even possible? How contingent is human behaviour? Can we reverse the scars left by the unbroken causal chains each human being finds themselves bound to?"Happiness" was a jet black comedy which jumped from paedophilia to suicide to masturbation to divorce to murder, deftly hopping from taboo to taboo with a kind of soul crushing cruelty. For Solondz, everything is a masquerade, humans are petty, pathetic and cruel, and every good deed merely masks something horrible at worst, hypocritical at best.With "Wartime" Solondz tries to recapture the cringe comedy and satirical edge of "Happiness", but mostly fails; we're now desensitized to his particular brand of sensationalism. What we're left with, then, is Solondz's clunky message: the past scars the future, Solondz says, but all should be forgiven, lest a cycle of animosity, hate, fear and torment be perpetuated. The film then aligns these themes to the events of September the 11th; America as a nation should forgive those who abuse her, as those upon whom pain is inflicted in the film should forgive their tormentors, or themselves if necessary. It's all very reductive, but far from the misanthropy which critics of Solodnz often accuse him of spouting. If anything, Solondz's a jaded idealist, his characters all looking for a way out of the rut he keeps digging them deeper into.7/10 – Worth one viewing.

match-3 First off, while I'm not a fan of everything Solondz has done, I consider Happiness one of my all-time favorite films. Thus, I was really looking forward to Life During Wartime, but after the film was over, I ended up wishing that Solondz had just left Happiness alone. It feels like a direct-to-video exploitation release, or maybe even an especially polished but ultimately off-model fanfic selection in an alternate universe where Happiness somehow holds the stature of Harry Potter.I am OK with the decision (probably forced, given the current stature of folks like Philip Seymour Hoffman) to recast everyone involved. But given that this is effectively billed as a spiritual sequel, it's hard to get past some of the resulting serious discrepancies in performance and character. Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Claran Hines and Michael K. Williams all turn in otherwise-good performances that unfortunately have very little in common with their characters' original personalities, making believable continuation impossible. Dylan Snyder's Timmy represents a new character that effectively replaces the role of Billy in Happiness, but he's nowhere near as believable or likable as that character was.Shirley Henderson, in particular, totally misses the tone and purpose of Jane Adams in the role of Joy, who was perhaps the only "sympathetic" character in the original (other than Billy). We no longer experience Joy as a sweet, lovable granola-crunchy dreamer and world-worn lifelong loser. Instead, Henderson comes off as some kind of generally-emotionless whispering wee faerie with none of Adams' warmth or ability to generate pathos. I do, however, greatly enjoy Paul Reubens' spot-on performance in the place of Jon Lovitz's original Andy-- although Andy's role in this movie is now inexplicably central, given how little he really mattered to Joy past the first half-hour in Happiness.It's hard for a Happiness fan to get past the labored and extremely drawn-out exposition that results from all these character discrepancies. You get the feeling that Solondz is having to take unusual pains to catch us up on the story, and to get us to buy New Actor Y in the role of Old Actor X. The movie starts to finally lift up out of these dregs in the last half hour or so, just in time to make us wonder what the point was, and/or why he didn't just create an entirely new universe with his entirely new cast to save himself (and us) all the trouble. I can't imagine a viewer who has never seen Happiness would find its first two-thirds any more satisfying for all the effort.Most troublingly for those who can't help but compare (and appropriately so, given the "spiritual sequel" billing), Happiness is a darkly hilarious movie, with most of the humor coming from the unspoken sadness and/or maliciousness of its desperate characters' interactions. Life During Wartime simply isn't funny, and isn't similarly "subtle." It's melodramatic, almost soap-opera-like in tone, with few of the wonderfully dissonant, squirm-in-your-chair moments that made Solondz' '90s works so entertaining (and so fun to show to the uninitiated). It often feels like we're being hit over the head with the "purpose" of each character in Wartime, rather than letting their actions / words simply speak for themselves as it was in Happiness.This might have been a somewhat OK movie if it had been a fresh start with no baggage from Solondz' masterwork. Obviously, it's hard for any director / producer / screenwriter to escape from their widely-beloved past works if they choose to do something different. But in this case, Solondz actually *chose* to bring that baggage along, and dares fans of the original to make comparisons (as is immediately evident from even the opening scene and credits to anyone who remembers Happiness). I'm not sure if this was a cynical effort on the part of Solondz-- who has had documented troubles getting funding for his 00s movies-- to cash in on the relatively small Happiness fanbase, giving them a movie that they "have to see," even though these two films ultimately have very little in common.Solondz' more recent work in general has been disappointing to me, but his misguided effort to "continue" Happiness has been by far the biggest and most bitter disappointment yet, failing to add anything new, interesting or even tone-appropriate to the universe he wants us to revisit. I desperately hope he's done making "spiritual sequels" now, and will have something really new to say (hopefully as funny as his old stuff) when his next project rolls around.

E Canuck Not being acquainted with Todd Solondz before now, I found myself comparing "Life During Wartime" at an advance screening tonight to the Cohen brothers, "A Serious Man"-- a film I really enjoyed. It felt like it was hitting a lot of the same notes at the front end of the film, with its humour and the Jewish family life. This was considerably darker--don't worry, I noticed.I found the Ciaran Hinds story and acting strong, though it made me wary I was being set up to think, "Oh, not such a bad guy, after all." I was relieved this never went further than to suggest, "only human, after all." I'd be interested to hear what some of my social worker friends think of how the film treats this family's big secret, especially in light of the forgiveness theme.Joy's thread in this film, quirky and fun as it was at times, felt the weakest. There was something about the character's little girl voice and the vacillation and mood swings that started to annoy and distract me, after a time. Maybe the director was just playing with another cliché, there, about long-suffering women, but, well, see for yourself.