Film Review – Junebug

November 15th, 2009 | POSTED BY Chad Eng

Junebug is an odd movie about a husband and wife who live in Chicago. The wife owns an art gallery and hears about this insane artist that lives near her husband’s family in the Carolinas. They go to see the artist and stop by the husband’s parent’s place for a visit. The whole family is a little … uh… “rural”. The husband’s brother is basically angry because he’s stupid and his older smarter brother has made a life for himself. The angry brother’s wife is expecting (and hot) and really likes the Chicago wife because she’s classy and smart and has lived in other countries. The dumb/hot wife gets the classy/smart wife to help her angry husband write a paper for one of his GED classes. He makes a move on her and then gets angry at her because she’s no better than the rest of the family (which is entirely untrue – she is). The mom doesn’t like strangers and the dad is REALLY slow.

Here’s a quick high-level breakdown of this movie. It’s about family – and how the OTHER spouse’s family is always way worse than your own. It’s also about denial and bottling up emotions, and shutting out strangers, and how pretending nothing’s wrong is totally how some families make it through life. Sure it is depressing and sure sometimes people end up breaking down, and sure the neighbors pretend not to know what’s going on, but you have to keep trudging through life. Like it or not.

The film is depressing and frustrating at the same time. You want these people to snap out of it and suck it up and DEAL with things. But you know they won’t. It doesn’t really have a happy ending, and it’s not uplifting at all, but I think it’s a decent film.

(3 out of 5 fus)

Amy Adams, Ben McKenzie, Family Drama, Junebug, Phil Morrison