The Squid and the Whale

2006 • 81 minutes

About this movie

Two boys learn the hard way about how a marriage falls apart in this independent comedy drama. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is a novelist whose career has gone into a slow decline as he spends more time teaching and less time writing. His wife, Joan (Laura Linney), meanwhile, has recently begun publishing her own work to widespread acclaim, which only increases the growing tension between them. One day, Bernard and Joan's two sons -- 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) -- are told that their parents are separating, with Bernard renting a house on the other side of their Park Slope, Brooklyn, neighborhood. As the parents set up a schedule for spending time with their children, Walt and Jesse can hardly imagine that things could get more combative between their folks, but they do, as Joan begins dating Ivan (William Baldwin), Frank's tennis instructor, and Bernard starts sharing the house with Lili (Anna Paquin), one of his students. Meanwhile, the two boys begin taking sides in the battle between their parents, with Walt taking after his father and Frank siding with his mom. Based on writer/director Noah Baumbach's own childhood experiences with his parents' divorce, The Squid and the Whale won prizes for writing and direction at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Ratings and reviews

Trust me your life is better without the visions this movie puts into your head. The critics who are highly rating this movie are the only ones in the world who could possibly find something nice to say about such an awful movie. I can tell you this, its about a how a family grows up with no direction from any family figures and end up making horrible decisions. If you have see the movie fly away home I suggest you don't watch this for another reason...

"Pursuit of Happyness", "I am Sam", and "Crazy Stupid and Love" movies.

Smart movie not for everyone... Solid acting and directing