Writer and director Maya Forbes is best known for films like Monsters vs. Aliens, and Diary of a Whimpy Kid so it makes sense she’d continue with projects of a man fighting the struggle within his own skin.
In this, it’s 1967, and a young girl (Imogene Wolodowsky) narrates the story to the roots of her father, Cam (Mark Ruffalo’s) manic depressive beginnings. 1978 was apparently the angry time for him, and with it came his stint in a Boston hospital when heavily used drugs and lithium were the only answer. Cam’s wife (Zoe Saldana) tells him their Bohemian days are over, and with their family of two daughters going broke, she has no option but to enroll in Columbia University to get her MBA. He’ll be left home to be caretaker to the girls, which is even more interesting because he’s a blue blood left to live in squalor. (spoiler alert)
The problem with the family, aside from his bipolar disorder, is that they tend to talk openly in front of the children even at the dinner table, causing the girls to have their own mini breakdowns. Yet, somehow the film, unlike most true-life stories, is not saturated in despair. Instead it’s quirky, at times comical, as it perfectly captures the essence of what a family might experience when experiencing a sweet, crazy, sometimes nutty, but always bipolar father. This man clearly loves his family so we clearly love him and all of his struggles, even if it means one day the kids come home from school to a house and he’s singing opera and another they come home to a house where he’s tossing cookie dough at the front door.
He’s over the top, he’s emotionally all over the map, and Ruffalo acts it well, showing bipolar is not a crime. It’s a lifestyle for the entire family. And the patient should always stay on his medication.
Ruffalo has taken so many risks, from The Kids are Allright to Avengers, but at the heart of him and any of his performances, he’s always the well-thought out, a consuming actor… Mark Ruffalo is infinitely wonderful. Three and a half tiaras