"Lymelife" (2008) - Movie Review

Most of the troublesome issues to deal with one’s parents is the denial that they are creatures of imperfection and more so like any one of us, has issues and can do big mistakes. That is predominantly the resultant in the suburban kids which is now major and in “Lymelife”, it goes to the origin in the 1970s dawn of early suburbia multiplying swiftly. The idea to make the story in that time period has nothing related other than the early Lyme disease being the talk in the times. It is another suburban dysfunctional family tale as the reviewers might call it. But all the families are dysfunctional in some way or other. That is what makes the few good times making the better the best of the worst. This is not cynical but a process in which happiness is weighed. “Lymelife” weights it too, nice and well.

Is the life of suburbia a curse or a gift of luxury? It has sure become an organism of justifying the existence into the cocoon of being the norm with heightened safety and security. What it has done so is putting the people in place of their responsibility, sacrifices and mistakes. The way to the problem seem to be diversely different but the arrival to it is no different. The mind of a human is a mind of its own. Young Scott (Rory Culkin) working his personality to project in front of his mirror is seeing the real world penetrating to unravel the realities of the future ahead of him in growing up. Most often back home, the kids do the school and nothing else runs through in a perfectly set family. Dad works and mom takes care of the home and kids like a clockwork. General complaints goes along with the forgotten furniture in the attic. Now the movement forward has opened doors of possibilities and problems in wide range and surplus. Where that is going to lead next is the interest which keeps the people marching to their next day.

Scott is a dad’s boy and his dad is sure a catch. When you look like Alec Baldwin and sharpen the sight of the eyes towards women day by day, boy like Scott idolizes seeing them at works. But he does not know that the sharpened eyes go beyond the sight alone. He does not like his mother Brenda (Jill Hennessy). She is protective and has resided the homemaker role with indifference. Scott is the next door kid falling slowly and surely with his dad’s employee and affair mate Melissa’s (Cynthia Nixon) daughter Adrianna (Emma Roberts). Is it so stereotypical? We are stereotypical when it comes to mistakes. Melissa’s husband Charlie (Timothy Hutton) is affected by Lyme disease and he loses the grip of the house. He hunts wildly the deer he seems to notice every now and then or is the weed giving him more than getting high. He knows he has passed on long ago as the husband in the eyes of Melissa. When Scott’s brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) comes home, Scott gets a feel of his family and a sanity check for himself.

The people in the film get tangled up in the feelings for each other that the resolving is a perpetual process. May be resolving is a delusional word. It gets postponed for the next outbreak and how long one can withstand becomes the test of the relationship. It is tough any relationship. Be close, be far and be whatever, you deal with it in the decisions. But suburbia has become the dissection of the set values. The desperation to attain the perfection in finance and family drives nothing but facade of building a strong future. We are in the generation where the cocoon mentioned earlier is the problem of becoming numb. Feeling becomes an absent thing and that results in whatever a person can gain. Rage and pain are easy picks. Adultery and guilt already is fed in the religion one follows as the forbidden fruit but that is a tool for higher feel for things. Thus begins the blunders and shambles of a family remaining in the burned down ashes of memories.

What “Lymelife” does has been done before. But to do it right and not be running in loops of mediocrity is this film’s strength. It has correct and measured performance from the Culkins, Kieran especially being the tough brother and some one who stands by seeing his sibling go through the phase of life he did. Baldwin and Hutton has a terrific scene in the bar where Charlie confronts him with a slow indirect innuendoes to the calling at him to expose the sham he is conducting.

End of it all, it is a cross section of the creation the modern person has developed to go through the ideal existence. The problems though is a continuing hassle without which there would be a birth of another suburbia life. The thing is simple and complex in dealing the reality. The simple thing is that life is supposed to be in circles with illogical behaviours and the goal to achieve the chiseled model of exemplified existence. The complex is in going through those rationally knowing it and realistically not able to accept it. This war within becomes the endless days and blossoms into a charming film in “Lymelife”.