I’m so bloody sick and tired of men who assume center stage is for them. The way the movie ends, and most of the way it plays out, it’s about the dad, about how he can’t deal with his failure to protect his daughter.
Mom’s not quite so important, apparently, despite her greater empathy with the whole experience: not only is she too beating herself up over her failure as a parent, for, after all, she’s as much the girl’s parent, but also she must surely be saying to herself ‘It could’ve been me — at 13.’
And that’s what the movie’s really about. The real story, the far more important story, is about Annie. She’s the one who misplaced her trust. She’s the one who pays for it, with her life almost. She even says as much, but apparently the director didn’t hear the writers (assuming he chose the last scene and determined how it was shot, who got the close-up, who got their big face in the camera last…).
This movie should’ve been an examination of not only trust (what is trust and how do we know who to trust?), but also an examination of love: with all the shit we force-feed our kids (including the shit ads the dad makes), it’s perfectly reasonable and perfectly predictable that what happened happened (and I refer here both to what Charlie does and what Annie does).
Shame on Schwimmer for making it about the man.
