ADULTHOOD. Warning: Side effects may include drowsiness, swelling, loss of vision and/or hearing, memory loss, crippling self doubt, depression, memory loss, the realization that no adult ever had things figured out, waxing nostalgic for the way things used to be, trouble breathing, having to figure out stupid stuff like mortgages, memory loss, actually enjoying going furniture shopping, the uncontrollable urge to criticize younger generations, awkwardly fumbling your way through numerous social events when you’d rather be at home, drifting apart from friends and loved ones with the occasional reconciliation, memory loss, the uncontrollable urge to criticize older generations, and obsessing over those small parts of your life where you seem to have some semblance of control just for the slightest chance at experiencing something real.
Other side effects not listed may also occur in some adults. If you notice any other effects, tough luck, there’s no one you can call and you’re on your own, because nobody else has their deal figured out either. Take only as prescribed. Results may vary.
Join your intrepid hosts in this exciting episode of the Reel Film Chronicles as they discuss the 2023 film The Adults, which explores the complex relationship of a trio of siblings trying to navigate life in the real world in a slice-of-life format that is in turns heart wrenching and heartwarming.
The Adults (2023)
directed by: Dustin Guy Defa
starring: Michael Cera – Hannah Gross – Sophia Lillis
Drama
91 min
Transcript (via Apple Podcasts)
Hi there, welcome back to The Reel Film Chronicles podcast.
As always, I’m Nathan.
And I’m Brian.
And in this week’s very special episode, we’re going to be taking a look at a little film called The Adults.
Some adults need to grow up.
The Adults, a 2023 film, I think.
I think this got a little theatrical run last year, but it’s on the, what, Amazon Prime?
Amazon Prime.
I find normally we’re talking about Netflix movies, but it’s like, what do you suggest to Prime?
I was like, oh yeah, I still have a subscription to that service.
There should be no problem to check this out.
Directed by Dustin Guy Defa, I don’t know.
I didn’t recognize any of his filmography, but stars Michael Cera, Hannah Gross and Sophia Lillis.
You recommended this movie last night, just before, you know, we’re talking about what to do the next episode on.
How’d you come across the movie?
You said it was on your watch list for a little while, right?
Yeah, I think I had seen trailers or ads for this pop up, maybe on Amazon Prime itself.
It looked like a little nice little indie drama.
And just with, I think recently I’ve been watching a lot of maybe bigger budget action movies.
I’ve been going through some of the Die Hard films with my son.
This felt like, I don’t know, this felt like, like a nice change of pace or something completely different, even from some of the more indie films I was watching.
This felt like super, super indie.
Like, if you, like, you know, you want some indie with your indie.
You know, the, the indiest little film that ever indeed.
It just felt like a nice change of pace, and it looked like Michael Cera playing against type.
And so I was really interested to just to check it out.
Just almost like a kind of a palate cleanser from a lot of the stuff I’ve been watching recently.
Something more grounded, a little bit down to earth, a little bit, you know, a little bit, maybe something I wouldn’t normally throw on on a Saturday night.
You’re absolutely, you’re absolutely spot on.
I didn’t realize it until I started watching, maybe as 20 bands said, and I was like, this feels like I’m taking a step back from all the movies now.
In the past few months, you know, we’re playing catch up.
We’re trying to watch all, you know, the acclaimed 2023 films in order to get ready for our top 10 of the year.
And it just kind of turns into a bit of a chore, right?
Sometimes, yeah.
To sort of be focused on something for so long.
And then here you can go, even though this is a 2023 film, we’re not necessarily watching it for any greater project.
It’s like a different genre of film that we’re not normally approaching.
And I saw that sentiment online as well, where it’s like this feels like kind of an early 2000s.
Yes, exactly.
What they refer to as mumblecore.
Mumblecore, yeah.
Indie film, right?
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Which is a term I kind of forgot about until I saw it in the reviews afterwards.
It’s like, okay, yeah, I guess I don’t know the exact definition of mumblecore, but if you go watch this movie or some of those other early 2000s indie films, you probably have a pretty good idea of what that is, I guess.
More of like a slice of life film.
Like there’s no major conflict of interest type of thing.
There’s no major events or anything.
It’s just kind of like…
Yeah, it’s not so big on the plot.
It’s more the character development and the emotional journey that these characters are going on together.
It’s not some big bombastic film.
There’s no sky beams.
There’s no grand plots to steal millions of dollars and property from a rich family and have them all kill themselves.
Just like it was just refreshing in a way to say, here’s a slice of life from a family and you get to witness kind of their idiosyncrasies, kind of like some of their little quirks.
And you’re like, oh yeah, like my family, when we get together, we’d probably do silly little things, like jokes you have.
Every family kind of has that.
So it really felt like you were like, almost like you were given permission to kind of spy on this family almost and be invited into their everyday lives.
It was just a really complete change of pace from everything I’ve been watching recently.
It was just a nice refresher.
Without a doubt.
We will talk about spoilers.
So consider this your spoiler warning for the remainder of the episode.
If you haven’t seen the movie, maybe go give it a little stream.
It was.
Honestly, I don’t know if it got a physical movie release or not.
Stream this bad boy.
It’s 91 minutes long.
It’s not a huge commitment.
And like you said, on a Saturday night, it was pretty ideal.
I don’t know if you try to do double features as well.
I usually try and do a double feature on Saturday night.
This one ended up being the second end double feature with a sort of more classic horror movie that I watched before.
So this really felt like a change of pace.
Oh, wow.
And it was really like almost relaxing to watch when I got into it.
It was honestly pretty pleasant.
And honestly, the movie was pretty decent.
I kind of didn’t know what to expect going into it.
I’m not like a huge Michael Cera fan, but I think we’ve all seen a lot of his previous comedy movies.
Yeah.
And I’ve never shied away from them.
And shows, Arrested Development, were got to start.
Or his big kind of breakthrough.
And it’s just like I haven’t seen him in a lot of things in a little while.
It’s just like, what does this guy do?
Obviously, he was in Barbie last year too.
Yes, he was.
Yes.
Playing the non-Ken.
Alan.
Alan, that’s right.
But he has a pretty specific kind of brand of humor, and it seemed to fit well with this character.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was written for him, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if you want to see Michael Cera really play against type, I suggest checking out Molly’s game.
If you haven’t seen that one, I don’t know if Brian, have you seen that one?
No, I haven’t.
Yeah.
Michael Cera plays against type, and he plays against type so, so well.
He plays a complete jerk, complete villain, and he’s playing himself in that movie, but he’s playing like a version of himself, like a fictional version.
But he does it so well.
He comes off like such a jerk.
And you think, oh yeah, he’s the nice kind of bumbling, comedic sidekick character.
He’s like, no, this guy does have range.
And this one is more of the kind of distant brother who’s got his own stuff going on, maybe a bit of a gambling addiction apparently, because he seems really caught up in these underground poker games and he just can’t let it go.
Obviously, the big plot point is they’re still dealing with the fallout of the death of their mother, these three siblings from four years prior.
But he’s obviously there kind of on business.
What business that is, I don’t know.
It’s never specified.
Well, I thought he only came down to see his friend’s baby.
Like his friend just had a baby.
He was going to come down for like basically two nights, see the baby because they spent the first, I think the movie opens in the hotel room and he’s sort of calling people.
It’s just like, all right, let’s schedule time.
4 p.m.
I’m going to go see the baby.
And that’s like all that matters.
Yeah.
So like he says he swung down.
So this thing, his story keeps changing.
He swung down partially for business, partially to see Scott’s baby.
You’ve never met Scott before?
Come on.
And then partially to visit his sisters who he hasn’t seen in three years.
His sisters played by Hannah Gross, who, by the way, daughter of famous Canadian actor Paul Gross.
Oh, really?
Yes.
So Paul Gross, probably best known for his portrayal of the Mountie, whose name I can’t remember, on Due South.
It was like a fish out of water thing where he was a Mountie stationed down across the border in the US kind of fish out of water thing.
Also, small aside, my mom went to school with Paul Gross for I think a year or two.
They were in grade school together.
My mom moved around a lot because her dad, my grandfather was in the military.
But for at least a year, she has his signature in one of her yearbooks she showed me.
So it’s kind of a cool little connection for me.
Hannah Gross was also in Minehunter.
She played the girlfriend of Holden in the first season.
I’ve drawn a blank there, but yeah, okay.
Hannah Gross and then Sophia Lillis, who I don’t know if I missed a decade or something, because it seems like only a couple of years ago, Sophia Lillis was playing a 14-year-old kid in the It movies.
And now she’s playing an adult, one of the three titular adults in The Adults.
So it just feels like, I don’t know.
I mean, she’s played a young adult.
I was trying to…
Because you’re watching this and you’re thinking, okay, she was in It and she was quite young.
And it’s like that was only like five years ago.
Five, okay.
So she’s probably like in her late teens, early 20s then, which her character is like college age, essentially.
Her thing is like she dropped out of college.
She’s kind of a free spirit.
That’s what I was thinking.
It’s like she’s 20, 21 in this movie.
And so as a little mistaken, It came out in 2017.
Five years ago is…
I can’t process these jumps in time anymore.
It’s just making me feel too old.
But yeah, she does a great job too.
And she’s been in a lot of movies in a lot of different things lately.
She was in the last year’s Dungeons and Dragons.
She’s 21 years old.
She was born in 2002.
There you go.
But it seems like it was forever ago.
Honestly, right?
But she’s coming to her own…
All these actors are…
Unlike Brian, I actually do enjoy Michael Cera’s shtick still.
And I love seeing him play against type as well.
And Hannah Gross…
I never said I didn’t like him.
I thought you said you weren’t a huge fan of his…
You said he was wearing thin or something, right?
His whole kind of…
I might have said that.
I feel like I was never really into his shtick.
But that being said…
That’s fair.
You don’t have to…
Everyone likes to be a fan of everybody.
Yeah.
I enjoyed a lot of the movies.
And I was looking at some of the filmography from back then.
I watched a lot of these movies.
I enjoyed them super bad.
Scott Pilgrim was quite big.
He was in Juno.
This is the end.
But I hadn’t seen him in so long.
That’s just like…
Overall, did he wear thin in pop culture type of thing?
Or did he just disappear?
That’s entirely possible.
Because I love watching him work.
But at the same time, he kind of got pigeonholed into that kind of one very specific comedic role.
I think he’s made a concerted effort to kind of play against that.
Even in This is the End, he was playing a version of himself that was kind of a jerk.
Because he’s known as almost like a nice guy, right?
And he’s kind of been playing against that in some of these.
But in this one, he wasn’t a jerk exactly, but he wasn’t super nice in this one.
He was obviously, as I said, they were trying to process grief from their mother’s death.
And obviously, other stuff was going on.
Like he, Michael Cera’s character, Eric, obviously had some kind of, I think it was implied that he had some kind of addiction to gambling.
Rachel, played by Hannah Gross, they literally stated out, right, she was depressed.
She talked about having panic attacks.
She was going through a big breakup.
And then Sophia Lillis’ character, Maggie, she had dropped out of college.
She’s kind of one of those.
She was very free spirited, whereas almost like she was going where her next instinct took her.
And she was talking at one point to Eric about, oh, a friend of a friend invited her down to become a whitewater rafting instructor.
And Eric’s like, have you ever rafted before?
And she’s like, no, he’s going to have to teach me.
And he’s like, maybe that’s not such a great idea.
Yeah.
But she’s just like, you can tell she’s young and she’s still just trying to figure out her path.
But she’s just a little bit directionless, obviously.
And some of her interactions with Eric was almost, I think she was viewing him almost like as a surrogate parent because both of their parents, I think, were dead.
And he was obviously Michael Cera’s, Eric was obviously the oldest sibling.
And it felt like when he came back, some of their interactions were like, he stayed for an extra day and Maggie broke down crying because she was so happy that her older brother was just going to stay for an extra day.
Obviously, there’s some emotional support or emotional need that’s missing there.
It felt almost like she was almost treating him as almost like a surrogate parent in a sense.
So there’s definitely some complex emotional journeys and emotional issues going on with the families.
And that’s really the kind of crux of the film is how they’re kind of resolving or not resolving these emotional journeys to that extent.
Well, there’s really nice dynamics between the three of them, right?
Like you said, Maggie kind of like, he almost becomes a father figure growing up because it’s been five years since her mother passed away, presumably a few more, since their father is out of the picture.
And also three years since, what’s his name?
Ken?
Eric.
Eric.
You’re still thinking Barbie.
And he also, he was Alan in Barbie, get your facts straight.
So Eric hasn’t seen them in three years.
Yeah.
So, I mean, he’s, that’s the thing, like they’re all kind of processing their grief in different ways.
And his is just like complete absence from the rest of the family, which makes the middle sister there, Rachel, I mean, they sort of come, they’re able to talk a little more frankly later on, where it’s just like, she feels like everything was put on her because her younger sister is too young to take care of anything.
Like she’s basically, Rachel’s taking care of the home, she’s taking care of all the aspects of making sure there’s a roof over their head.
Yeah.
And he just kind of like leaves, he moves out of like, I can’t remember where he lives, but far enough away that he’s elected only to come back once after three years.
And like you said, now that you mentioned it, I don’t know if he was there on some other business and the baby was just like in a side, right?
He keeps changing his story depending on who he’s talking to.
So you can’t be exactly sure, but he makes it a point at one point, I don’t know if he’s, it’s just like him kind of like humble bragging about how he’s like, oh, he’s a frequent flyer for business and he can shift his flights and it doesn’t cost him anything.
It’s like, okay, so is he actually like, does he actually go places on business or I thought it was gonna be revealed as, oh, he lost his job or something and he needed the poker money.
It’s never really clear.
And I think intentionally so, like he’s kind of, he’s obviously not being truthful with everybody around him.
And it’s like his deal is avoidance, right?
He’s avoiding processing this kind of grief by, you know, he left.
He literally went away so he doesn’t look at any of this stuff.
He’s telling people different stories of like, oh, I’m going to see Scott’s baby.
But then when Scott calls like, oh, yeah, I can’t see your baby tonight.
I’m going to come see you tomorrow.
He goes to this poker game.
And so he’s like constantly kind of balancing out and avoiding, you know, directly talking with people, directly dealing with his own emotions and the emotions of others.
So like Eric was avoidance, right?
And then Rachel was depression where she’s taking all this burden on herself, internalizing everything.
She talks about her and Maggie having panic attacks and dealing with all this stuff.
And, you know, like, so that’s that’s that kind of thing.
And then and then Maggie is, I don’t know what Maggie would be.
Boiler down to how she’s kind of processing that.
Maybe that’s what’s a bit of denial because you see her.
I would say denial because she’s really focused on like the times when they were growing up and they were kids and she like reintroduces the skits and songs and stuff that they did as children.
If she starts doing one of them in front of like they’re in their backyard, she starts like singing the song and she’s doing this dance.
And as a viewer, you’re like, this is weird, okay, but continue on.
And the other ones, eventually he joins in first and then Rachel joins in last.
It was just like, oh, this is stuff they used to do as their kids.
So Maggie is like constantly trying to bring them back to the time before when they were happy.
So for me, she was stuck in that happy space before their parents were gone and they were all kids and could get along in that way.
Yeah, it was great.
I love that kind of stuff because those little dances and skits they were doing, that’s exactly the kind of stuff that going back and watching our home movies, it’s like little stupid things like that where we have to do it in front of the camera.
We’d be playing charades or something at a family gathering and doing something ridiculous, doing the YMCA or something.
It’s all the stupid little idiosyncrasies and in-jokes of your family that only somebody else in your family would get those references.
Then to have that, it made them feel like a family.
That to me is what sold them together.
It’s like, only they would get these jokes, only they would find this funny.
It’s a joke that only a few people in the world get and that binds them together.
There’s a level of authenticity to the siblings that it’s really hard to achieve.
I think this film really nailed it.
Honestly, it did.
Their relationship on screen felt pretty genuine, especially through that kind of like, they’re all weirdos.
It became understandable how they were functioning together there, but they all also have their own voices and characters.
They’ve taken all these different personas.
I was going to say it was great.
Which was probably the feature for me.
And also what I read in reviews afterwards was the most annoying thing for a lot of viewers who thought it was very, quote unquote, cringe whenever they started doing these voices of this stuff.
But it’s like, so I guess in this movie you either encounter that and you can’t handle it or you encounter that and you know why that’s going on.
And for me, I felt like I knew why.
It’s like I can theorize.
But I’d like to further your point there where the middle sister, Rachel, starts doing her voice because they’ve all done the voice together now.
It’s like, moopy, moopy.
Moopy, moopy.
And she’s at work and they’re doing something and she wants to voice her opinion to her co-worker about this project and she uses the voice to say her true opinion on it.
I think we should cut this segment.
And the guy’s just looking at her like, what is this?
Why are you saying it like that?
And you realize that they’re all using it as a shield.
This is how I interpret it.
They all use it as a shield.
It’s a coping mechanism.
Yeah.
That conversation you mentioned earlier where it was like the younger Maggie wanted to, she was talking about becoming a white water rafting teacher.
Michael Cera breaks into his character’s voice to question that.
Charles.
Yes.
And what kind of job were you thinking about?
And so it was like he knew that he couldn’t say that to her as him.
He couldn’t doubt her.
He couldn’t voice that opinion.
So they all voice their opinions, their true conversation in their voices, which culminates in the final, near the final part where they’re like arguing with each other in their voices.
And the youngest one who was using the voices as a way to bring happiness to them, it’s like she wasn’t necessarily using it to speak truth, right?
She was already speaking her truths without her character.
But she was the first one to drop the act when the others were going all in on the act.
Well, it was like, yeah, they were using it almost as a coping mechanism where these characters they had met were almost proxies, where things that they didn’t feel comfortable saying themselves, they could give voice to as these characters.
So the characters who usually were like the happy-go-lucky, they were doing little skits and stuff, and all of a sudden you see they were bringing them out.
Rachel and Eric were using them to express their true feelings.
They were getting into a fight through these character voices where they’re expressing their frustration, their anger with each other that they couldn’t express normally.
I thought it was really well done.
It spoke to the psychological complexities of these characters where it’s like, yeah, they cannot directly confront their emotions, and they’re having a hard time doing this.
And Maggie, she was the one who was instigating this and using them as a coping mechanism.
When she sees her two older siblings, using them and co-opting them to get into this argument and almost tainting them.
It’s almost like a wake up call.
You see her as like, oh man, this doesn’t feel right.
She’s like, oh, maybe we can just drop the act now, but they can’t.
They keep going back as their characters, talking about how they’re going to puke at each other’s mouths and stuff and how there’s obviously some resentment and stuff.
I think at one point Rachel literally tells Eric, I had to stay here and figure out, once mom died, I had to figure out how to pay taxes and get a mortgage and do all this stuff with no help from anybody.
I guess Eric just left.
Rachel felt this burden on her shoulders when she had to take on all this stuff herself.
And Maggie wasn’t old enough, obviously, to take on that kind of responsibility.
So there’s some resentment there and some anger.
And they’re kind of working through it.
But it’s a sobering moment, I think, for Maggie, where she sees like, oh, yeah, the titular adults, right?
It’s like we’re still relying on kind of these childish personas to be able to talk to each other.
It’s almost a wake up call.
It’s like, okay, we obviously need to hash things out as adults.
And so I thought that was a great turning point.
And like you said, you’re either in for the ride or you find it too cringy to watch.
I feel sorry for you if you missed that on this because of the cringiness, but it is what it is.
For some people, I knew as soon as I saw that element, some people were going to be turning this off right away.
But for me, I like that kind of that quirkiness and those idiosyncrasies and how they’re used specifically in this movie.
Honestly, I don’t think the movie would have been nearly as interesting or effective at its goals if it wasn’t for this.
It’s like you’re watching some movies and you’re thinking, okay, what’s the point of the movie?
What is the movie trying to say?
And it’s like this one, it’s like the other ones in the genre.
Like it’s just, you know, just familial conflict and the character study.
And they throw this in.
You’re like, okay, this is what sets this apart from other movies of similar quality, of the similar type.
And I love, honestly, I loved it.
I love that they had that in there.
And they’re all weirdos.
It was like, it just made them more relatable.
Cause as you said, when you get together with your family, there’s a long history of all of you being kind of weird, especially from an outside perspective.
Like, I don’t know if you remember like having a friend over for like say like any kind of holiday or anything, or anything where there’s like any kind of tradition.
And the friend will just come to you afterwards and be like, you guys are weird.
Like, and you just take it for granted, your family, but you do the things you do together.
And that’s just, it’s normalized, right?
Well, that’s the thing.
If you took a camera and followed any family around for any length of time, any of us would look like complete weirdos to everybody else because you have these little weird in jokes and stuff.
I was like, yeah, of course.
All families are like that.
If you made a family, if you made a movie about any random family, you’d be like, these guys are a bunch of weirdos.
And I really enjoyed it.
Like the very end, again, it was another day where he was going to go.
Eric is visiting his sister Rachel in the morning, and it’s like they were able to have a bit of that.
It wasn’t a full conversation.
It was not a full reconciliation, but was the first major step towards a healthy relationship where they’re not talking through their proxy characters.
Yeah.
I thought it was really effective.
And they don’t say too much, and not a lot happens in that scene, but it’s like you really get the sense that this is a big step for this family, especially those two.
Yeah.
I think Rachel and Eric really needed to hash it out.
And like there’s that scene after that party where they’re having that argument through their character voices.
They’re back at home.
Rachel goes to bed, and Eric goes to tuck her in, and they have a little conversation without their character voices.
And Rachel says something about how I was like, yeah, I don’t think you love me.
And it’s like, yeah.
And he kind of leans in and is like, yeah, of course I love you.
I couldn’t help but love you.
Otherwise, we’re family kind of thing.
And I think what you said hit the nail on the head is the first time, and who knows how long, they were able to express real emotions to each other and have these real adult conversations without relying on those character voices.
And so I was like, yeah, they were doing some real adulting, I guess, to borrow a very annoying phrase from pop culture.
The adults doing adulting in this movie.
I mean, what is…
Okay, so the other side of the movie is the poker’s kind of side story, where Eric is in town and he kind of gets a…
This is where, like you were saying, it’s like it’s showing that maybe he has a gambling addiction or a poker addiction.
And the movie isn’t entirely clear.
I mean, for us, at the beginning, you’re watching and you’re thinking, Eric is extending his stay only to play poker and win money and prove himself because he kind of loses to, I want to say like an amateur, like someone who’s playing poker, who doesn’t know all the ins and outs, who should have stayed instead of calling a hand.
Yeah, I love that where he’s like, it speaks to I guess the unpredictability of life where he’s like the person in there was obviously, he made a bad call.
If he was playing against a…
This is the thing, you got pro players playing against each other, like who know kind of all the odds of all the different hands.
It was a bet that a pro player never would have made.
But this person, it’s like almost that wild card when you have an amateur in there who just like, I’ll just, sure, I’ll go all in just because.
And then came up and he won the big pot.
And I think it was like, it goes to show like Eric is trying to control things, like poker is a way where he can kind of control.
If you’re good at it, if everybody’s playing by the rules, everybody’s playing well, there’s a predictability to it.
And you see as he goes forward, he’s actually really good at poker.
He keeps winning and winning in other games.
So I thought that was a really great way to kind of show maybe his addiction to gambling is a way for him to kind of control that chaos or think, give him some sense of control, right?
And specifically with poker where you do have a little bit more control, I guess, than just like if you’re betting on like a horse race or something, it’s almost more random.
At least poker, you have like some kind of agency where you’re deciding what to do.
But it was almost like him trying to impose some kind of order on chaos, right?
Yeah.
And the other side of the reviews from like the, obviously people who feel that the characters and the voices were cringe, a lot of the reviews said that the poker is actually some of the most realistic depiction of these types of poker games.
And they play, but happens.
So you’re watching this mumblecore indie movie, and you get all of a sudden a pretty realistic poker movie within that.
It was just like me and my family would play poker every so often.
There was that whole Texas Hold’em craze for a little while.
We’re not playing for tons of money.
Everyone’s throwing in a looney or toonie or whatever, a couple of dollars.
It’s the same kind of thing.
So I recognize watching some of it from TV too is a nice way to pass time, but seeing it in this movie and seeing it as far as I could tell was pretty accurate.
And also just the disparity between someone who knows what they’re doing and trying to be professional and then just the random chance that happens, like the last carve that hits the table is this random thing that just completely upsets the hand.
Yeah, it’s just like…
I think there was an element of realism when he goes like, he’s playing with these people and then their friend is like, oh, this person usually wins when we’re playing with her.
Oh, when’s she going to be in next tomorrow night?
She’s come back and she invites him to the bigger underground game and the buy-in is like, oh, it’s a bigger underground game for locals.
Like, oh, you’re thinking…
I’m thinking like Rounders, where it’s like $20,000 buy-in.
Bring a couple hundred bucks, right?
It’s the bigger buy-in.
Because of course, it’s a small town and the bigger thing is like, yeah, people aren’t going to be risking thousands of dollars on this.
Everyone is going to have a buy-in of like maybe two, three, four hundred bucks, which is a substantial amount, but it’s not massive, right?
It was really neat.
It was a great mechanism to advance that character and it was like you were still undecided even after you extended his stay like four or five days for more poker games or was he realizing that he needs to spend more time with his family?
And there’s a great conversation where I think after the first extension, he’s going over his schedule and he’s just like, you know, at 4 p.m.
I’m doing this or 6 p.m.
And Rachel says like, you’ve given us five hours of the day.
Like five hours is the amount of visit after three years.
And it’s just like that for, I don’t know, for me that like hit a little more differently, I think, than like my sister is far away, her family is far away.
She’ll come down for a visit for like three weeks.
And obviously, like that’s a long time, but it’s only X number of hours in a whole year or two.
If you don’t, you miss a year or something.
It’s just like, it comes almost a crummy way to like, while you’re like, for Rachel, she’s not enjoying the time as much as she probably should because she’s counting down the time.
Like it’d be like having a stopwatch on your wrist while you’re spending quality time with a loved one.
It’s just like, oh, in like 45 minutes, this is over.
So you sort of focus on the clock more than just the time itself.
But still pretty valid for him, just like come all this way and seek out friends.
And the first one I think is a Desmond that he goes to see.
Like he just drops by.
Dennis, maybe?
Dennis, yeah, Dennis.
Thank you.
He visits Dennis and Dennis is like, I haven’t seen him in ages.
I’m just watching TV.
And he’s just like, oh, you want to do something after TV?
He’s like, no, I’m going to bed.
So it’s just like Eric here is foregoing his family to go visit friends that really do not care about him.
They don’t care if he’s there one way or another.
This guy, he shows up, he’s just like, all right, plan out something later on, but you can’t just drop by and say hello.
After three years and expect things.
After three years.
To have not changed at all.
Family, you can just drop by and just be like, boom, all right, we’re doing something right away.
But your friends and who we focused on so much in the beginning, it’s just like the complete opposite.
So it was a nice change for him, I think, to basically, I think he was coming to that realization throughout the movie.
And I think he was staying longer, four of them.
It’s not clear at the end of the movie if he’s gonna stay longer or not, right?
Obviously, he works in some way.
I was also thinking about that throughout the movie.
It’s like he has some job, but he keeps extending the stay longer and longer.
It’s just like nobody seems to be working too much in this film, but it is what it is.
I think it was The Weeknd, right?
Yeah, after a couple days.
After a couple days, yeah.
He stays like four or five, I think.
It was just like they mentioned those poker games going on like three times a week or something.
There’s a potential.
I think it was hinting at the end where you see him.
He had an early morning flight.
It’s like these two sisters are up and having a cup of coffee, and he’s not up yet.
And like how long, when is his flight leaving?
It’s like in an hour or something.
Okay, there’s the hint that he’s going to stay a little bit longer and reconnect with his sisters and that kind of thing.
And they’re not rushing up to wake him up or anything too.
Yeah.
Like they want him to miss the flight.
So it’s just like, it’s still nice to see even after they’re fighting everything, they reconcile a little bit.
It’s just like, they’re still coming together.
It was really good.
Yeah.
Also talking about the poker games, that robbery scene at the end.
Oh, jeez, yeah.
When he gets that first player that he knocks out at the beginning of the night, he waits there all night to rob him, presumably at gunpoint, although he never shows a gun or anything.
It’s like a field of dream situation.
It’s like, I’m not going to show you my gun.
And there’s a point where he starts to, obviously, he starts to break down a little bit.
Eric does a little bit, right?
Where he mentioned before, he never has panic attacks or anything like that.
But you see at one point where he’s kind of arguing with this guy is like, dude is like, you lost your money.
It’s like, I have a gun with me.
Give me the money.
He’s bargaining.
I’ll give you back the money that you bet.
It’s like, give me the money.
It’s like, how about if we split half?
And then he starts really breaking down, not just stammering, but it’s like almost like he’s short-circuited and he just can’t get the words out.
And it’s like, okay, maybe like, so there is a hint that maybe he has been having, I don’t know if it be technically a panic attack or anxiety, some kind of anxiety attack, but he’s really just, he’s having a difficult time just processing this.
This is an incredibly stressful situation, obviously, right?
Yeah.
He explicitly says it’s not fair.
And what he’s saying, it’s just like, it’s not fair.
It’s like he has to come to a realization, like that’s probably what he’s been struggling with for a long time.
Like his parents have passed away.
That’s not fair.
And it’s like he’s trying to make everything fair maybe later on.
And it’s just another step for him to be like, yeah, life’s not fair.
You’re going to get mugged for all the money, even though you’re trying to be kind.
It’s like, all right, I’ll give you half the money.
Like this guy didn’t earn it.
And it’s like, it just doesn’t matter.
Life is not fair.
These things just happen.
Yeah.
No, that’s a great observation, right?
That’s amazing.
I’m trying to get, again, that sense of order and control and that sense of fairness.
Yeah, that’s amazing.
Also, for anybody who thinks, anybody who doubted that Michael Cera can act, that scene at one of the poker games where they’re going on the table and kind of saying like, well, when did you, I guess the question, the topic of conversation was, when did you first know about death or understand death?
And Michael Cera starts telling the story and it ends up being the Lion King.
He’s describing the Lion King and how Scar kills Mufasa and Simba doesn’t know that he’s dead.
But he starts crying as he’s telling the story.
You could see the emotion on his face.
And at the end, he reveals like, yeah, it’s the Lion King and people like, yeah, somebody was explaining the Lion King to some of the younger members of the table.
Yeah, I like that part too.
I was crying to sell it, but there was that ambiguity.
Was he putting on an act?
Or was the Lion King, would it come out probably the same?
We watched it when we were really young.
His character is roughly the same age as us, I think.
It’s reasonable that a young child would have watched that.
That might have been their first introduction to really seeing death, to seeing death on screen in a big budget Disney movie, like really poignant death.
So that very well could have been him, like his actual first brush with death.
And he was legitimately tearing up, but he brushes it off as almost like, he’s like, oh, I’m putting on performance to really sell the story.
And you’re not sure, is it one or the other or a little from column A and a little from column B to borrow a Lion King?
Lion from another Disney movie.
Try some of column A or all of column B.
From Aladdin, the genie song.
Come on.
Made an esoteric reference to lyrics from a Disney movie from 25 years ago.
How can you not pick up on this?
But yeah, that was, but it was great with the ambiguity in terms of the character.
And it’s like, again, that underlying theme of not being able to process your emotions in a healthy way, but also like highlights, like, okay, this Michael Cera kid, he can act, right?
He’s got this huge range.
He doesn’t just do goofball comedies when he is doing this stuff.
There’s some goofy stuff in here, but then there’s like, there’s some serious adult moments where he’s going through some stuff and some serious adult performances.
And like kudos to Michael Cera.
Like it was, I was genuinely engrossed as the camera was moving in on him.
Like that was a hell of a performance.
Legitimately a really good acting scene.
And it’s the one I almost forgot about until he started talking about it, but it was just like, yeah, like it’s still a fool on the audience.
Like on myself, it was just like, was he genuine or not?
It’s like I’m watching and thinking he’s pulling from something deep within to pull out a performance like that for a bunch of strangers at a poker table.
It’s like there has to be some element of truth to it.
But he’s also like so serious about his poker vet.
Like he tries to mess around with people too when he’s talking to them, playing poker.
In fact, of course, the humour of like not everyone knowing what The Lion King’s story is are just like pieces together.
So it’s like great way for an audience to like be in on the joke afterwards too, where it’s just like, oh yeah, this is that scene, these characters in The Lion King.
It scarred me for life.
And even that joke I had to explain is like scarred with the name of the lion.
I love this guy.
Obviously like the youngest one at the table, right?
It’s like…
Oh, that was great.
Man, oh man.
So, I mean, honestly, the more we talk about this movie like that, I was just really kind of floored by it, honestly.
Like I don’t think I was really anticipating liking it as much as I did.
Do you have anything else before we get into our ratings on the film?
No, no, I think that’s it.
I think that pretty much covers it.
It was, again, this movie was also exactly as long as it needed to be.
There was no fat on this.
It was like it got right to the points, established the characters quickly, established their, you know, went on these emotional journeys with them.
I liked how there wasn’t some big, huge, cathartic moment or some huge epiphany.
It was like a series of kind of small steps over the course of really just a couple of days in these characters’ lives after having not talked or not seen each other in three years.
So like it felt more true to life in that.
Yeah, not every time you meet someone like that, you’re going to have some big epiphany experience.
It’s going to be like there’s a small step forward, and it felt really realistic.
And I love that, that they didn’t try to, you know, everything felt so grounded in this.
It was a super nice breath of fresh air after watching.
You go watch bombastic movies like watching Napoleon and the marbles, and then you watch this and it’s just like, oh my God, this is exactly the breath of fresh air I needed, 100%.
So for our ratings, we use a five-star system, you know, half-star up to five.
We also leave room for a bonus like on top of that, which I think, honestly, we never give out unless we’re rewatching a film.
But you never know, you never know.
What’s your rating out of five stars for The Adults?
I’m going to go with a three and a half out of five on this one.
I thought it was respectable.
It was really good.
Like three and a half was like, for me, that’s like, that’s a really, really solid film, like above average.
Didn’t quite hit like the four to five rating for me in terms of like, really like exceptional or great films that I’m going to be revisiting all the time.
This comes out in physical media.
I’m going to pick it up.
It’s a really great addition to have.
It was surprising because you never know how these movies are going to go like they don’t get a lot of hype.
You don’t.
I didn’t see a lot of advertising outside of essentially Amazon Prime.
So it’s like one of these very, very, very small, like true indie, true mobile core kind of movies, which not always my cup of tea, to be honest, but this one is like, you know what?
Maybe it came along at the right time, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What was your rating out of five, Brian?
Man, I’m still like, even as I start saying this, I don’t even know what I’m going to give it.
This one took me by surprise.
I was, as I said just before, I really wasn’t sure, even near the end, I was just like, is this a three, three and a half, is this a four-star movie?
The thing is, I was glued to everything.
I was glued to the characters.
I really liked it.
I really liked everyone’s performances.
I wasn’t familiar with Hannah Gross.
She was really good here.
Michael Cera is really good.
Sophia Lillis, this actor is going places.
Obviously, I remember from it.
100%.
She was a standout.
I didn’t place her in that one until I looked up the credits afterwards.
She’s going places.
What a way to get really going with something serious and wacky.
I don’t know.
I don’t know how to articulate how much I enjoy this movie.
I think for me, it was a four-star film.
Oh, nice.
Which is almost like makes it into that top 20, top 25 for the year rating, which I was really not expecting to come out of this.
But I think you said it perfectly before.
I think last weekend, we both watched Napoleon or the past couple of weeks.
They were catching up on some of the lengthier epics.
And they just kind of fell a little flat, especially in the characters.
And in 91 minutes, this movie can assemble such interesting characters that you can relate to.
If you can’t, you know they’re realistic.
There’s interesting things going on with them.
The story, the plot, I should say, is really good.
This movie does so much more in 90 minutes than these giant movies do in three and a half hours.
And I think it deserves some recognition.
And yeah, I never saw any trailers.
I never saw this mentioned anywhere.
I’m glad you brought it up.
I’m glad I was on your radar and brought it up for us to watch.
Yeah, no, I’m surprised that you liked it.
I was kind of worried when I recommended this because I’m like, I don’t know.
It’s always tough to tell, right?
Because I know we were, I think we, I kept, for some reason, I kept thinking about Black Bear, which is a movie from a couple years ago.
Was it 2020, 2021?
Which was, it was an Indie film, a very different Indie, but I think we both ended up really loving it.
Yeah.
And I, for some reason, I kept thinking back to Black Bear.
It was like, we were both on the same page about that.
But I was watching The Adults, it was like, this movie, I know is not going to be for everybody.
So I was really curious to see your reaction.
I’m really glad you liked it.
It was like, yeah, this is, this is really cool.
And like, after talking about it, it was like, yeah, my rating might go up on a rewatch.
I definitely want to check this out again.
This is one of those ones where it’s like, yeah, it’s got so much relatable, like just the underlying element of like dealing with and processing grief, which is such a shared human experience.
And like that kind of all the kind of the complexities and politics of anybody who has siblings knows as you get older is like, yeah, like relationships are complex, right?
And family relationships are, you know, the most complex of all, right?
There’s so much baggage there.
And like, because these are the people you knew, literally since you were born or certainly thereafter, you have like the most history with these people.
They know you better than anybody else in the world.
And so to see that play out and to like, you’re thinking about how your family would react in these circumstances and putting yourself in that position.
I thought the movie did a really good job of portraying that really engaging.
It was really, really a surprise because I wasn’t sure what to expect coming into the movie.
So yeah, The Adults was like, yeah, it was a nice surprise.
Nice surprise, nice change of pace.
I don’t think I’d watch one of these types of movies every couple of days, but to throw it into your gauntlet of movies that you’re watching week to week, a movie like this definitely has its place.
And yeah, I think we’re all the better for watching it.
100%.
If you’re looking for something a little bit off the beaten path from standard, the standard pantheon of Hollywood films coming out, all the superhero stuff and all the big action stuff and even all the big dramas and stuff, looking for something a little bit off the path, you got Amazon Prime, right?
Then you have this service anyway.
Check it out.
You know, little smaller movies like this that really, they’re the ones that really need that support and that viewership and that word of mouth.
So like absolutely give it a shot.
It might not be a cup of tea, but you may find something that really speaks to you.
So yeah, if you have a chance, check out The Adults.
That’s a wrap on another episode of the Reel Film Chronicles podcast.
Thank you for listening and hanging out with us today.
We really appreciate your support and look forward to you joining us for the next episode.
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