The Details (2011) Reviews

• Rambunctious... Horny... Raccoons...

  bennyprofane2012-06-22

  Tobey Maguire is a pitch perfect anti-hero in this bizarre, absurd, dark movie about love and raccoons. The movie plays like a demented fairy tale, replete with butterflies, rainbows and cross-bows. The audience I saw it with was in stitches. But this isn't really a comedy. I wouldn't even call it a black comedy. I'd say the movie is more of a magical absurd comedy, if that is even a genre. It plays like a fever dream, swinging wildly between realism and camp. I was surprised about 100 times during the watching of this film, and to tell much more about it would just spoil the fun of it for you. Suffice to say, you will not get what you're expecting. If you want something normal, this isn't it... I will warn that sometimes the movie makes your stomach turn, as you're forced to live in the shoes of a morally suspect character... but I think that was the point. There are no good or bad people in this movie. There are only morally gray people, who behave like raccoons... hungry, horny, needy and desperately seeking worms... I was lucky enough to see it in a recent festival screening. I think it will be really interesting to see how general audiences respond....

• Searching for Hell

  claudio_carvalho2014-06-05

  In King County, Washington, Dr. Jeff Lang (Tobey Maguire) has been married for ten years with Nealy Lang (Elizabeth Banks) and they have a little boy. Their best friends are Rebecca Mazzoni (Kerry Washington), who has studied with Jeff in the medical school, and her husband Peter Mazzoni (Ray Liotta). Jeff decides to sod his backyard, but the grass comes with worms underneath and raccoons destroy his sod during the night. Jeff wants also build another room in the house for his planned second son, but the City Hall blocks the project. Jeff decides to build the room without the approval and he gives a beautiful plant for his next door neighbor, the unstable Lila (Laura Linney) that lives with her cat Matthew, expecting that she does not denounce his construction work to the authorities. Jeff also likes to play basketball with his friend Lincoln (Dennis Haysbert), who has kidney problem and needs hemodialysis. However, the raccoons disturb Jeff and Nealy has not had sex with him for six months. Jeff decides to poison the raccoon and he meets Rebecca to drink and relief his bitterness about his dried up of sex marriage and they end the day having sex in Rebecca's home. Jeff finds a better work for Lincoln as a coach at a school and he learns that his friend will die soon. Jeff gets close to a breakdown when Peter discovers that his wife betrayed him with Jeff; Matthew is accidentally poisoned by Jeff and Lila seduces him and they have sex. Jeff decides to donate one kidney to save the life of his friend, but when he is recovering from the surgery, he learns that Lila is pregnant and he comments his life with Lincoln. Will Jeff find redemption in his journey to hell? "The Details" is a love or hate movie, with dark humor, drama and amoral story. Jeff Lang is a family man and doctor that begins his descent to hell when raccoons destroy his expensive sod. The turmoil of his life is funny since the bad things sequentially happen to Jeff. The scene when Lila tells to Jeff that she is pregnant is hilarious. Tobey Maguire is a great actor but his baby face does not fit well to his role. But Laura Linney "steals" the movie with a top-notch performance. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): Not Available

• "Make an effort to see one of the funniest, blackest, and most deliciously subversive comedies in years"

  StevePulaski2012-10-11

  There's scarcely anything than better than a fierce, biting black comedy on a bright, sunny morning and Jacob Aaron Estes' The Details delivers one and then some. Not only does the film give us a wonderful premise with efficient character actors, but it's the way that we dive into these socially and morally complex people that makes it such a wonderfully black experience. Rarely has a film bottled me with so much guilty, unadulterated pleasure and rarely have I liked it so much. Tobey Maguire, one of my favorite actors, plays Jeff Lang, a doctor in suburbia with a lovely wife, a cute kid, and a Toyota Prius. As a doctor, he lives a moderately enjoyable life, but he feels rather unfulfilled with the lack of pleasure in his life sexually and literally. His wife, Nealy (Elizabeth Banks) rarely is in the proper mood, even when the kid is asleep, so Jeff frequents various pornographic websites to satisfy his typical male urges. But it's to the extent he goes to satisfy his deeply unsatisfied urges is when The Details takes off and becomes almost fearless. Jeff decides to commit an act of infidelity with a close friend named Rebecca (Kerry Washington). They wind up having sex and it's all downhill from there once her husband Peter (the great Ray Liotta) finds out. Upon discovering the situation, he gives Jeff two possible options on how to keep him quiet about the situation and both are equally dismaying. The shocking thing is even after this small adventure into cheating, Jeff still isn't completely satisfied and winds up accepting sex from his quirky middle-aged next door neighbor (Laura Linney). While this is all happening, Jeff's other newfound interest is attempting to rid his backyard of raccoons who have been persistently digging up his sod. The Details brings to light two different things about the masculinity of males that can not be ignored; their quest for sexual pleasure and their desire to accomplish difficult and demanding tasks. The fact that the film explores these deep, inner urges of most males' psychs is a challenge from the writing department and it allows the viewer a deeper, larger motivation for the despicable steps taken by the anti-hero Jeff. Because Maguire has now completed his odyssey with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise, it's pleasing to see him try out different lines of work to hopefully become known as a character actor, with roles like this and Seabiscuit under his belt. Here, he immerses himself into the deeply complex and ambiguous role of Jeff Lang and his diversity and hidden talents come forth in this black comedy of errors. This film is now available on video on demand and will be in selected theaters on November 2, 2012. Make an effort to see one of the funniest, blackest, and most deliciously subversive comedies in years. Starring: Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Ray Liotta, and Kerry Washington. Directed by: John Aaron Estes.

• Off-Balance and Falling Flat

  jcbinok2015-11-29

  "Details" reminds me of the type of movie that was popular in the mid-2000's: every character is just a bit off. Tobey Maguire plays a obstetrician, Jeff, who's addicted to porn; his wife is cheating on him; his neighbor sniffs basil; his female friend gets him high in her husband's vintage car then they proceed to have sex...you get the idea. It's one weird tangent after another. Jeff engenders little sympathy in viewers up through the scene where he tries to buy off the cuckolded husband, Frank (Ray Liotta), who puts in a powerful performance during their confrontation. Maguire's character makes an attempt to change his ways at this point by donating a kidney to his sick buddy, Link (Haysbert). That leads to a second powerful scene(in the church), but not until after the healed buddy kills Jeff's "unreasonable" pregnant neighbor. Sounds complicated, I know. The church scene gets cut off way too quickly, though, IMO (like a sudden fade-out during a killer guitar solo). The movie hurries back to safer ground with the final scenes playing out in domestic "bliss." Jeff and his wife lay their secrets on the table and decide to stay together and not go to the authorities "for the good of the children." It's all so absurd. Wasn't there a police investigation? Surely, Jeff's name would come up in that he was the dead woman's next door neighbor and her obstetrician. Oh well. The movie tries to walk the tightrope between farce and drama. Apart from a couple of scenes with Liotta and Haysbert, it felt much closer to farce.

• The Details is not a still life portrait

  RickRosenthal2012-02-09

  The Details goes places where most films these days dare not venture. It's a black comedy but it does not bother to play sight gags of the grotesque. It's a black comedy but it is not afraid to become suddenly dramatic. It strikes me as a generally fearless movie, not afraid to deal with the darkness and ridiculousness of male sexuality (Tobey Maguire plays the part of the likable loser-internet porn lover-sexual deviant exceptionally well), not afraid to allow its characters to express a kind of cartoonish intensity which borders on surreal at times, nor is it afraid to allow its characters to reveal deep human insecurities. The filmmaker seems to be interested in constantly showing you different sides of his characters and his story, as if it was a cubist/surrealist dream/nightmare--his characters have multiple faces, his storyline can be viewed as hilarious or dark and unnerving and sometimes even, sweet. Whereas many films released these days are formally obsessed with fitting into a genre, this movie seems unconcerned in adhering to formal movie tropes-- it is at once a hilarious comedy about a man obsessed with ridding his yard of raccoons, about marriage and silly things-- then -- deftly-- the audience finds itself sliding into an absurd realm of murder and darkness and uncomfortable laughter. The truth is, most movies are one simple thing, easily digested and marketed and discarded--but this is not that. Watching this movie you just know, it was invented with a spirit of anarchy and joy and yet, despite this apparent lack of concern for normal rules of the screen, the story- telling itself still manages to keep us consistently tense and pushed toward an inevitable, at first funny, ultimately shocking conclusion. Playing the part of a cat-crazed, manic- depressive, Susy-home-maker sexually obsessed neighbor, Laura Linney turns in a performance that should make even the most cynical movie-goer prick up his or her ears. Also, Elizabeth Banks stands out in this film, especially in the end, when, after her husband, played by Maguire, finally reveals the truth he has been hiding from her all along (all the horrible things he did in secret over the course of the twists and turns of this movie's wild plot). Her reaction to learning the truth from her husband is at once hilarious and gripping and would probably never be forgotten by anyone who sees it. At the end of the movie, the audience is asked to be complicit in the characters sins (which I won't tell you any more about so as not to spoil things). The characters just "go on" in the aftermath of the mess they've created. That said, one could argue that the end of the film is bleak, and that that is unsatisfying. But I would argue that it is just another part of the filmmaker's willingness to throw caution to the wind: It's as if--after an hour and a half of laughing-- he's saying "yeah, it's funny, but..." Since the sins explored in the details are common sins that get wildly out of control--sins any of us might relate to--the movie plays like an allegory for our shared, collective lack of morality and while it is funny... it is also serious. Some movies are perfect-- they perfectly capture you in a web of sentimentality or comedy or darkness-- this is not that. This is not a still life.