Nebraska
Director: Alexander Payne
Writer: Bob Nelson
Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach

Plot:
Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is old, alcoholic and shows signs of dementia. So it’s no wonder that he actually believes the bogus letter informing him that he won the lottery and needs to come to Nebraska to pick it up. When his family doesn’t want to go with him, Woody tries to walk there. Several times. Until finally his son David (Will Forte) gives in and goes with him on a trip to Nebraska in the hopes of calming Woody. On the way there they are also confronted with the life Woody used to have.

Nebraska was so not my film. I was bored out of my mind for most of it and annoyed for the rest. There was nothing there for me, despite the good performances.

Where should I start? With the fact that I didn’t like the characters – not a single one of them – and I didn’t like how the whole family comes together to make this poor old man happy, despite the fact that he obviously was nothing but horrible to them in his entire life? I mean, I get that you want to be good to your family and I understood why David would go on the trip with Woody. But Woody’s happiness wasn’t his responsibility and especially with the way the entire thing ended, the movie made it seem like a noble thing that he tried. It’s not noble to be self-denying. Especially not for the sake of somebody who doesn’t give you anything in return. Children don’t need to make their parents happy.

Or maybe I should rather go on about the fact that Alexander Payne made yet another film that is all about the menz and I. just. don’t. care. anymore. I’ve seen it way too often. Just stop.

But quite apart from the topic of the film, there was some seriously bad filmmaking there as well. The camera-work and the script was so stereotypical that I was able to speak along with the film and knew what was going to happen next in scenes, despite seeing it for the first time. And that’s just sad.

There were two things that didn’t completely suck: The cast was good, especially Bruce Dern gives a great performance. And the soundtrack was nice, even though there could have been more than the two pieces of music that were actually used for the entirety of the film. But other than that, no.

Summarizing: Severely overrated.