PG-13, 1 hr. 30 min. Directed By:
Patricia Riggen. Release Date:
May 11, 2012.
In a lot of ways, Progress does for coming of age movies
what Scream did for horror: it acknowledges the formula while failing to
deviate from it. For me, both movies did
something interesting in that they created a story wherein the main characters
were very cognizant of both the method of their own madness, and in a more
passive way, the Fourth Wall. In this
case, watching a girl not only go through the coming of age that we all go
through, but force the process along at an enhanced pace, was a great… addition
to the established formula. And let’s
face it, coming of age stories are a dime of dozen, whether we’re talking film
or novels.
I love Eva Mendes’ character,
Grace. She clearly loves her daughter
deeply, and just as clearly doesn’t know how to interact with her because Grace’s
own mother was a terrible parent and she never had the role model she needs to
be a decent parent. She has, in essence,
become the same terrible parent that she herself despised; the same parent that
caused her to run away from home with her newborn daughter at 17. I’m also going to repeat that Mendes isn’t
beautiful in the traditional way, but she is crazy sexy. I like Cierra Ramirez’ portrayal of Ansiedad,
and I could even empathize with her in a way.
I, too, am saddled with a name I hate, although hers is worse than
mine.
I was surprised how much I loved
this movie, even as the story unfolds and the tale grows deeper and deeper into
cliché and well-established patterns that end with a cloying sweetness that
still had me smiling. In some ways, I
think that we all might be better off if we did research and decided to design
the path to life experience that transitions us from child to adult. In other ways, I was a little horrified how
frankly “Ann” went about her path and how little she gave thought to the
consequences of her actions. The
research should have taught her that this path is fraught with problems, even
when done naturally over the course of years.
When you compress that time line into a matter of (I think) three weeks,
those consequences should have been exacerbated.
I’m thinking that this movie isn’t
going to be for everyone. I live in
Dallas, and yesterday, when I went to see Dark
Shadows, the theater was packed.
Today, I was one of three people in the theater. I do think that this vague twist on a classic
story made for a great movie, and it may be that a lot of people will go out
and see this with their mothers. Well, I
think a lot of women will go out and see this with their mothers this weekend. I mostly went to see this to provide some
diversity in my blog posts, but I’m very glad I did.
If I have a complaint, it's that there's a LOT of dialogue here that would have been more natural in Spanish with subtitles than in English. A nod to middle America was the death blow for realism.
