Excellent movie. It makes me really sad to see that a movie this good has a bad homophobic line. Shame on Adam Rapp, the writer, for letting that line stay.
In Winter Passing, Zooey Deschanel is the daughter of a famous writer, played by Ed Harris. She lives in New York -- she is trying to act; her dad lives in Michigan and still suffers from her mother's death. Zooey goes to Michigan. Everybody is excellent. Zooey became one of my favorites immediately, Will Ferrel proved once more that he can really act (he did it before in Woody Allen's Melinda & Melinda).
Our bad content happens when Zooey tries to kiss Will Ferrel in this awkward scene. Will Ferrell kind of pushes her away and she delivers: "You faggot! You fucking faggot!" That broke my heart. The movie was excellent, but I was going to give it a Shipwreck 1. I only added one more point because she sort of apologizes to Will Ferrell later, she says sorry, and that the incident was weird. But she does not really apologize for the hateful homophobic slurs, so, she could be apologizing for the awkward almost kiss for all I care. And don't give me the, "oh, she was a wreck" crap. We have seen train wrecks who managed to pull out a great LightShed. Look no further than Lisa Hamilton in Nine Lives.
And you wanna know how bad this type of name calling is? My better half had forgotten about it right after the movie. I concede that, maybe, my hubby is not as anal retentive and fired up as I am and that he can let things go and he is the one preventing me from pulling a Courtney Love on people's ass all the time, but I do believe that even when we forget a homophobic incident, it sticks to our unconscious. Dangerously. A lot of internalized homophobia comes from there, especially when served to us in such an excellent movie. Even the soundtrack
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