This is a very good film. Not perfect but a worthwile film, often funny and mostly a heart-squeezer. The Squid and the Whale is a bittersweet film about family problems, about broken relationships and shattered families. It's also about the angst of surviving adolescence and perfecting a very ruined life, like building the ruins of what seemed like a damaged foundation. A really funny portrait of families nowadays. The movie could be brutally honest sometimes, yet painfully realised at the most. OK, maybe you should bring home a copy of this film one day and let your parents see it and make them realise what hell they would cause if they would decide to split up. But anyway, watching this film would truly encrypt in your mind what chaos do broken relationships cause and what instability would it persevere over the household, especially to the children. It's a kind of film that would make us see the bitter truth, like being spoon-fed by a horrible pill that you wouldn't want to swallow. Far from a perfect movie, I could say it is well done. Although I didn't really grasp the whole idea of why was it entitled The Squid and the Whale, I liked this film. And I think the reason why it was entitled that way was that there was a huge sculpture of a whale eating a squid in a museum at the end where the main character Frank stares at it in a grim realisation kind of staring: was it metaphorical? I dunno. Written with amazing performaces by Jeff Bridges and the Laura Linney, this movie was indeed an acting-blowout film. Also added up with bright newly-discovered talents by Phoebe Kates's son, I-dunno-what's-his-name was a brilliant boy in this film with a classy I'm-punk-bad-ass attitude with such a foul mouth for a ten-year old kid. Even a small role from Anna Paquin is splendid.Watch this film. A person that belongs to a family would like this. Well, at the bottom of it all, everyone belongs to a family, right?

Rating: A-