Movie #201......................."All I Need"

Movie #201 "All I Need" is a first for me. It's the first movie I've seen that got o% on rottentomatoes.com --- out of 7 critics who did see it, none of them liked it. hmmmm. Well, I don't think it was that bad. And it is only 7 people. I have to admit, I watched it halfheartedly. I was proofreading the newsletter that we've been working on for a week, and I knew where the movie was going. It was odd, though, so I'm not sure why it never got me to put things down and actually watch it. 1) it dealt with a 17 year old (Elijah Wood, playing the same kind of guy as in Everything is Illuminated) falling in love with an older woman (Franka Potente, whom I like a lot) 2) he keeps typing (not on the computer, but on a real typewriter!) notes to his dad, whom he never really got to know and his mom won't talk to him 3) he calls his mom by her first name and he has a weird relationship with her --- he's almost parenting her because she drinks so much 4) the weirdest people live in his apartment 5) watching Mandy Moore coming on to Elijah Wood was strange because she's supposed to be so religious of a person in real life 6) he goes to college, but is scared away by some guy in the parking lot and his roommate, and so he just lives in he college town. 6) he has so many fantasies that sometimes you get them mixed up ---- I liked that part, and actually I liked the strangeness, but I guess the leads are playing their parts so low key that the film never seems to go anywhere. But if you are looking for quirky, this is it. Not so much so, that it's funny (I think I laughed out loud once) but I smiled a lot and nodded like "oh that was a cute scene" kind of attitude. But only once in a while. See Everything is Illuminated. Much better.




Average rating: 2.855
I would give it 2.8
All I Want
Try Seventeen
(2002) R
Teenager Jones (Elijah Wood) has opted not to go to college and is instead renting a room in a boarding house to work on his writing skills. Soon, Jones finds himself dividing his time between two women: a young actress named Lisa (Mandy Moore) and a photographer named Jane (Franka Potente). After Jane's ex-boyfriend arrives to help her recover from a car accident, Jones begins to understand just how much he cares for her.