To me, The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding are almost the same film; they explore similar themes, have similar characters, and share the same dark sense of humor, but I enjoyed this movie much more.

From what little I’ve seen of Baumbach’s work, he tends to tell his stories piecemeal. I think this works a lot better in this film than in Margot, perhaps because it’s much lighter fare. Like Margot, the film centers around family dysfunction, but doesn’t seem to take itself as seriously.

(In a lot of ways, the central themes reminded me of Wes Anderson. I did a little Googling and found that Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale, and Baumbach co-wrote Anderson’s The Life Aquatic.)

Squid, in my opinion, also has a much better cast than Margot. (Nicole Kidman was good, of course, but Jack Black gave a really off-putting performance, and I think Baumbach’s decision to cast his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, was a mistake.) Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels give brilliant leads. Billy Baldwin – who is apparently going by William Baldwin now, perhaps in an effort to be taken more seriously – does a competent job of playing the younger son’s tennis teacher, and Anna Paquin has a real edge playing one of Daniels’ students young enough to be entranced by his intellectual bullshit.

In the behind the scenes documentary, Baumbach says, “I’m drawn to characters who are articulate and cultured and aware of psychology and art but who have immense bilnd spots in terms of their emotional life.” That’s all well and good when it works, but when it doesn’t – and for me, Margot is an example of this – the characters are exasperating to the point that you can’t relate to them. Thankfully in Squid, it works, although you can’t help but come away from it feeling Baumbach believes those kinds of characters are in some way superior, and that’s the kind of attitude that is going to get him into trouble. (Or at least allow him to make more movies like Margot.)

This film effectively conveyed the choas surrounding the schism of a family. Just as it is difficult to merge two lives together in marriage it is also hard to break them apart.

The characterization was perfect. It had just the right amount of dry comedy and sometimes revolting drama to create a film ultimately about growing up, no matter what age.

This is definitely worth watching if you enjoy seeing human psychology play out subtely on the screen. To be crass and make comparisons, it’s kind-of a cross between ‘Rushmore’, ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ and ‘Manhattan’. For a film directed by the writer, it avoids being self-indulgent and is in fact quite restrained, heightening impact with short, tight scenes. The cast is excellent – especially, Owen Kline puts in a performance well beyond his years as the younger son.

This was a very good movie. As one of the previous commenters says, I’m sure there are two groups of people – those who see a little bit of their own families in this movie and those who refuse to believe that such a malfunctioning family relationship exists.

I, personally, grew up in the divorced family that the two kids in this movie grew up in. So it made this movie seem all too familiar.

The dialogue and acting were both great. I really liked the use of music as well.

I will admit, I was really confused by the squid and whale image and reference. It was totally over my head until I did some research to see what that scene was supposed to be all about.

I think this is one of those films that will separate viewers into two groups: those who had supremely dysfunctional upbringings and can relate, and those who grew up in Brady families and think this stuff doesn’t really happen and therefore aren’t able to get it.

Me, I’m pretty much the same age as Frank (i.e. I was 13 in 1986), and my parents had the opposite relationship to Joan and Bernard (my Dad was the slut and my mother was the bitter, grasping-at-desperation intellectual).

I found this film to be charming and even funny at times, but beneath all that I was disturbed beyond belief to be shown a mirror in such a clever way. I wasn’t as depraved as Frank, but I certainly see a lot of my fucked-up teenage behaviour in Walt.

Two lasting highlights of this film for me were the name choices (it couldn’t have been better than Joan, Bernard, Walt, and Frank), and of course the haunting image of the squid and the whale in the museum. I will definitely watch this film again at some point once I’ve had a chance to fully absorb the initial viewing.

I can’t call this a review really, and I feel it may be a bit unfair for me to have said that this film isn’t worth consuming. I mean, I have a feeling that it is actually quite a decent film, a good film even. I’ve read reviews on Amazon where people rated the film poorly and called it/the behaviour of its characters morally depraved and despicable and disgusting. I don’t feel affronted by the film in that way. I just felt like I couldn’t appreciate it because I couldn’t relate; I found myself oscillating between finding the characters foolish and self-indulgent and annoying and not actually giving a damn. The actual squid and whale thingy was pretty cool though; I’d like to go take a look at that someday.

A great movie, but can someone please explain to me what was going on with the younger brother?

When little frank announces to his mother and her boyfriend, his tennis coach, “I wish I could come with you guys,” hidden meanings tumble out from between the lines as if the wheels on this family had detached and the carriage return simply departed the vehicle. And that, loosely, is how this little bumper car of a film goes. It’s an amusement in a parking lot of prep school American culture, where books are praised and besmirched, studied, written, and plagiarized. “Rather Kafkaesque,” as elder son Walter describes The Metamorphosis, by Kafka.

The phrases that spew and exit from Mom and Dad, and sons Walter (teen) and Frank (adolescent), hit you viscerally, punch-lines to the gut, funny and painful at the same time. Could they be more dysfunctional, this lot? If you put them in Scotland and wound back the calendar to, say, Thatcher’s reign? Is it possible that a kid might have an Oedipal conflict with his mother’s boyfriend? Or his mother, an Oedipal conflict with her son? This is not Capturing the Friedmans, but it could be “Letting fly the Freudians.”

Ultimately, the Squid and the Whale steps back from analysis and leaves the viewer to piece together the verbal dribble, miss-cues, and malaprops where they belong: as out of place as the characters that produced them. A broken home leaves pieces behind. No analysis puts it back together, no humor can mend its holes. A hilarious and poignant film.