Mark Ruffalo has received two Oscar nominations - for Foxcatcher and The Kids Are All Right, both in supporting roles - and hasn't won yet. You know how the Academy loves to hand out awards to actors when they play mentally ill characters? Well that would truly be a travesty here, as the typically-fantastic Ruffalo has never been hammier or less believable.
"Big deal how you live! It's not your fault!" Cameron (Ruffalo) yells to one of his daughters, who is clearly mortified by her current situation. There's another scene where one yells, "That was so embarrassing!" after they walk uninvited into an old family house. Get ready for a lot of high-volume antics in this movie, which is based on writer-director Maya Forbes' childhood. Perhaps she was too close to the material to truly evaluate the final product.
Cameron and Maggie (Zoe Saldana) are a biracial couple living in 1970s Massachusetts with their young girls. Dad suffers from bipolar disorder and after another breakdown and visit to the institution, mom watches the girls on her own until he recovers. She can't find work nearby but she gets accepted to Columbia University for a year-and-a-half MBA program. Shy of options, she thinks it's best to leave the kids in his care while she goes to New York to increase her earning potential.
It's a tough spot to be in, and hard for all involved. But "Infinitely Polar Bear" absolutely feels like a movie version of a mental illness. There's something too adorable about it, down to the title, which never taps into anything all that real. See Ruffalo run around outside in his underwear when it's cold out. See Ruffalo try to be a good neighbor but just end up freaking them out. See Ruffalo buy a car with a giant hole in the bottom (oops) and playfully patch it together with things from the kitchen (yay). His manic energy feels lifted from an SNL sketch.
But it's not just his fault, although the movie does rely on him to succeed. The script is surface level and never connects emotionally. The daughters, one of which is Forbes' real one (Imogene Wolodarsky; the other is Ashley Aufderheide), kind of blur together without many identifying character traits. It's like they were instructed to just be cute, sometimes yell and look horrified when the patriarch does something else weird. Saldana doesn't have much to do either besides pout and question her life decisions (for good reason).
"Infinitely Polar Bear" has a diverse soundtrack, including songs from Ike and Tina Turner, along with Theodore Shapiro. It's shot with a grainy lens, which adds to the feel of the time period. But if the most authentic thing about a film is the way it's shot, well, that's a sad story indeed.
| Movie title | Infinitely Polar Bear |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2015 |
| MPAA Rating | R |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | There's something too adorable about this movie, down to the title, which never taps into anything all that real. |
