Random Movie Reviews 1

Back when Covid was a thing, we started a weekly family movie night. We've kept it up over the years, usually watching two movies each time. From the biggest of big blockbusters, to quirky arthouse films, to weird whackado "what did we just watch?" nonsense, we've watched a whole lot of movies.

When I'm not drawing or writing something for Carbunkle!, I'll drop a quick review here on the blog now and again.

This week we watched "The Man Who Knew Too Little" and "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain".

The Man Who Knew Too Little

"The Man Who Knew Too Little" is a Bill Murray movie.

That's pretty much all there is to say about it. It's Bill Murray being Bill Murray in a Bill Murray movie. Here, he's playing the nice, befuddled Bill Murray instead of the jerky, smarmy Bill Murray but, all in all, he's still Bill Murray.

Perfectly fine. A few good laughs. That's about it.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

I guess I only watched half the preview for this movie, because I was expecting a quirky, funny little film about an artist who painted cats.

It was actually a harrowing tale of a successful artist with no business sense, struggling to support his family, dealing with the deaths of his loved ones, and trying to hold on to his sanity. Spoiler: he doesn’t, and he spends the last years of his life in an asylum. He still gets to paint once he’s institutionalized. That’s sort of a happy ending if you’re an artist, I suppose.

As biographical movies go, it seems to take few, if any, liberties with Louis Wain’s life, which Hollywood rarely seems able to do. I appreciate that. There’s nothing worse than watching a movie about someone and finding out afterward that it’s just a cobbled-together Hollywood “sort-of biographical” monstrosity. I’m looking at you, Braveheart. The Greatest Showman, Amadeus, etc and so on.

While I recommend the movie, it is a bit of a downer. If you’re a financially struggling artist dealing with the death of a loved one and struggling with your mental health, you should probably steer away from this one. But if you like cats, cat artwork, and Victorian-era family drama, you should be fine.