When You Finish Saving the World Movie Recommendation. I’m just gonna say it – Jessie Eisenberg, he should start his own cult. I’d drink his cool-aid. Regardless of what’s in it. So, yeah, I’m not going to be presenting you with an honest, or even-keeled review of this movie. Mr. Eisenberg, is a playwright, an author, oh, and an Oscar-nominated actor… and now he’s a Director. I mean, come on. When You Finish Saving the World was originally written by Eisenberg as an Audible Original. And from that, he wrote the screenplay… and directed it.
Why is When You Finish Saving the World worth your time? Because, in its utter obviously obliviousness to its brokenness, it is hilarious. It might require you to have do previous work to get the jokes. It might utilize the word tautology as a punchline… it might drop articles on suicide incandescently inappropriate mid-dinner conversation… it could be so awkward as to permanently affix your eyebrows to the tops of your forehead. You will be, in a word… aghast. And yet, it specifies the illness so clearly, in that it isn’t the things these idiotic characters do (because each are brilliant, if brilliantly stupid) but it’s just how un-self-aware they all are.
When You Finish Saving the World Movie Recommendation
You gotta admit, the generation gap has been explored on screen enough to warrant its own theme park ride. But said ride wouldn’t come replete with Ziggy and Evelyn… who are so obviously acting out about their lack of love being manifested at home we might need to get them their own counselors and psychological intervention. But they? They do not know this. They are so unabashedly clueless as to their psychic damage that they continue their destruction like a tornado through a trailer park, but never once do they look backwards to see the damage that they have wrought.
Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard – who we might as well admit at the top, could be a doppelgänger stand in for Eisenberg) falls head over heels for school-girl poet, Lila (played gorgeously by Alisha Boe who we know from Do Revenge) who he impresses with his musical talent by rewriting one of her poems into a song. (With a different sort of ‘self-medicating’ along the way.) But he impressed her not at all when he begins to brag about the $90 he made live streaming the song… Ziggy was so close. And yet, so utterly in the wrong universe to connect with such a politically motivated and empathetic human being like Lila.
Then there is Ziggy’s mother, Evelyn (Julianne Moore – Magnolia). Evelyn is a political activist turned social justice warrior who has taken a young guy under her wings. Kyle, who’s mother and he have fled a violent father, goes from being a great cause to help, to a stand in replacement for a spark-less marriage and a disconnection with her son in one fell swoop. Evelyn drags Kyle to an Ethiopian restaurant, because nothing screams love like injera. And when he obviously doesn’t like it – she pressures him to eat everything on his plate. Mother issues is right.
Ziggy, desperate to impress Lila, who obviously didn’t (and still doesn’t) care a whit about the politics of Pacific islands, or climate change, suddenly attempts to spin up a new found love of the topic. So, what does he do? Strumming a single chord with his guitar, he begins searching for words that rhyme with congressman… Collagen – Jonathan – Oxygen. I mean. If that doesn’t have you laughing out loud and just how desperately love-sick, and completely unaware of himself he is, then I got nothing for you.
The movie ends with both our anti-heroes getting shellacked by their respective love interests… Ziggy by Lila, and Evelyn by Kyle. And cosmically, Ziggy – upset and pounding on his locker, crosses paths with Kyle, and they acknowledge one another. As if the universe was telling us everything we needed to grok this particular film in that one star-crossed collision. After which, Ziggy cuts class and wanders the town, reflecting on his mother’s life’s work. Simultaneously, Evelyn begins watching Ziggy’s youtube songs and reflecting on what she’s been missing all this time in her son. And yes, the ending is a bit ham-fisted and obvious… but it was the ending this movie needed to pick these two characters out of the trash bin and set them off on the right direction before the credits roll.
When You Finish Saving the World Thoughts
To have a mirror of your life that is something of a funhouse mirror so as to elucidate the flaws and glitches in modern society is compelling. The father here is no better than the other two – but he has retreated from the battle, determined to read, and drink his way past the errors of the other two members of his family. Ziggy, clueless through to the end, is showing us what our younger generations are valuing as important… ephemeral likes, and wispy thin praise from passing internet audiences. And if Ziggy ever were to take on an important topic – like climate change – it would probably be for the money, more so than for the actual issue at hand.
And Evelyn? What about her? I’m guessing that most viewers assumed that this movie was all about Ziggy and his inability to do something important with his work, or his life. But no… the title of this movie infers that it is more about Evelyn. Think about it, she was a political fighter in her youth. She went to rallies, and protests, she taught her son protest songs. She would change the world. But over the years, as that hope faded, notice what had become of her life. It settled into a large glass of wine after work each day and a disconnectedness to her son that she could solve. Heck, she didn’t even seem to want to understand, let alone solve.
I think the movie is talking to the parents of today’s kids… and it is asking a pretty simple question: Shouldn’t the idealism and struggle of your youth mean something still today? Shouldn’t your desire for a better future still mean something that should be tangible in your day to day lives? And shouldn’t it start at home? Maybe by relating to your kids, your husbands? Maybe just caring about those closest to you? When You Finish Saving the World had a serious Kindergarten Teacher movie vibe going for it throughout. I couldn’t quite tell if Evelyn was romantically engaged with Kyle, or idealistically. I’m going to assume she was just hoping for him to experience all the important things that mattered so much to her because of the possibilities she saw in him. (College, Ethiopian food, the struggle… etc.).
I think if When You Finish Saving the World went wrong somewhere, it was in its belaboring of the point. It sort of felt like Eisenberg was making an anti-Pump Up the Volume movie (you remember that Christian Slater movie?) – sort of the, what happens with your Pump Up the Volume reactionaries grow up and have kids and forget the cause movie. No? But in its belaboring – it was at least really funny throughout. I might have been watching through my fingers at the horrible train wreck happening before my eyes, but I gotta say, the laughter was pretty great. I mean:
Ziggy: “When the light is on, I’m live streaming and you don’t come in my room.”
Evelyn: “And when it’s off, I’m free to go about my business? I’m free to go about the rich pageantry of life?”
That’s pretty great stuff right there.
Edited by: CY