MovieChat Forums > Terri (2012) Discussion > Completely Predictable

Completely Predictable

posted 13 years ago by kaiser100
13 replies | jump to latest

When 'Indie' films started getting more popular in about the late 1990's or so, they broke new ground and defied genre conventions, which made them so interesting to watch. However, now they have formed their own group of conventions that will be trotted out over the course of the film.

I found watching Terri I was able to pretty much predict everything and every character in the movie. Nothing was surprising. I knew despite the reviews that it would not be that funny, but actually mostly a drama, because I'm used to that now.

Then you had the outcast, the troubled home life, the offbeat house he lives in, the unconventional authority figure, heart-to-heart conversations about certain ugly things people do (like the assistant hoping the other assistant would die), then a sombre scene (the funeral), and the inevitable conversation about how life is tough.

Then you had the outcasts getting together and forming a bond in a scene where they are all laying around laughing and acting awkward.

Also, you had the music, which seems to sound identical to every other dramatic Indie film I have seen.

I felt like I had watched the same movie as several others I have recently seen, which also got tons of praise and were supposedly hilarious but turned out not to be. The movie was not bad, just not worthy of all the accolades, IMO.

I saw Garden State for the first time recently and I suppose when it came out it was fresh and original, but I reacted the same way to it having seen a bunch of others in the interim. "First this scene is going to happen, then this one, and then this character will pop up, then they will visit their friend who lives in an offbeat house, then they all get together and do something oddball, etc."

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] yan-trussart 13 years ago

Maybe OP should sspend a little less energy trying to predict what comes next and pay a little more attention to what's happening on screen...

[–] Sylphadora 13 years ago

Why are you all being so hard on the OP?? I actually agree with Easypz. Just because (s)he didn't see the same things as you in the party scene, doesn't mean his/her interpretation is invalid. So you understood it in a completely different way?? Well, congrats. Wow, I'm impressed with your superior intellect. I'm so sick of all this 'you were not paying attention'/'you didn't understand' comments. They sound really bigheaded and disrespectul. When will people realize that not everybody interprets the same situations the same way?? It's called having an opinion, and everyone is entitled their own.

[–] liscarkat-2 13 years ago

My un-humble opinion is that the first two-thirds or so of this movie were interesting, then at about the point when the girl came to Terri's house and they all got high it fell apart. In the end, there was no growth, no development, and everything was still about the same as it was at the beginning. Terri was still a pajama-wearing loser, the girl was still a pathetic slut, and the skinny little kid was still a freak. So deep, so powerful. Ho hum.

[–] Oblivion14 13 years ago

That was actually what made it remarkable for me. Growth and development are for fairytales. While fairytales are nice every once in a while, this wasn't one of them.

In most "seen through rosy lenses" teen films, Terri would have suddenly become popular, or the girl would fall in love with him, or the three would become fast friends for life, or something even more implausible like Terri suddenly gaining the wisdom of a 101-year old Buddhist monk.

Heck, in most other movies, Mr. Fitzgerald would probably be a 101-year old radical avant-garde Buddhist monk/teacher who will move heaven and earth to inexplicably make "Terri shine" because he was "special" or some *beep* like that.

Even the fact that there were no dramatic or tragic turn of events was refreshing. Except for old Hamish, no one dies. So many other movies have someone die conveniently just to jerk tears from the audience. Or worse, teach them a lesson, as teen movies have traditionally been the fertile ground for non sequitur cautionary tales. Really bad things happen when you break the adult rules apparently.

And just because there was a lack of an explicit ending, doesn't mean there was no ending. There was one, and it was quite obvious:

Terri was going to be just fine.

[–] Lewsir 13 years ago

I'm with Oblivion on this one. How could anyone have predicted that the three would spend that kind of an evening together? To me that was one of the more surprising, intense scenes I've seen in a movie in a while (nothing in Hunger Games comes close, for example).

I fear that most movies are predictable in part because of the damn trailers we are all fed all the time. I didn't happen to see the one for this movie, which helped.

[–] thew_matic 11 years ago

It's hard for me to take criticism written in purple seriously.

[–] dudi-10 12 years ago

I found this movie to be highly unpredictable
it wasn't a story like: we must destroy the ring in the depths of Mordor, so we travel to it in a fellowship and we will meet thughs and kill them and destroy the ring in the end and come back to celebrate (not to flame LotR which I really enjoyed watching and don't find that predictable as well, but it's way more predictable than this movie)

one of the key reasons for the unpredictability is that Terri can go right, but he might as well go left or turn 180° around because he doesn't really knows what he wants until the moment presents itself and even then he might just do the opposite.

for the people that think there is no growth in the characters I simply have to say this:
did you learn that at school? that every movie MUST have character growth or it's bad? if so can you validate your argument by proving this scientifically?

often in real life people don't really grow and remain the same throughout their whole lives because that's just the way they are wired.
and if you say that makes for bad television, well just look at all the reality BS that's on tv, people eat that up like crazy and there is less quality in all of those shows compared to this movie.

but in the end, everyone is allowed to form it's own opinion, so if you didn't like the movie, then it's your own loss

[–] lexyladyjax 12 years ago

I agree with Dudi. It wasn't predictable and it was enjoyable. I quite liked it, which surprised me. I thought it was going to be a film in which Terri would up losing weight and fitting in with the rest of the lame drones in the school...instead he formed his own group and it was better and more realistic. He made friends yet he still had integrity. Loved that bit.

What you meant is not what you said.

[–] knoxfan2008 11 years ago

The main character of Terri was so bland and boring. The film-makers were thinking "feel sorry for him because he's fat" and that was it. This film was just awful, it could have been good, yet it also totally wasted John C Reily

[–] thew_matic 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure his home life was plenty to sympathize with if you had that much problem with him being fat.

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 10 years ago

I'm with you. In the broadest strokes, the outline of this movie does sound familiar. But in its details, it is a true original.

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[–] PseudoFilmCritic 11 years ago

Indie films did not get more popular in the late 1990's - that is wrong. Independent films have always maintained some interest before the 1990's, unless one forgot that John Cassavettes had a popular hit with A Woman Under the Influence in 1974 or Carpenter's Halloween in 1978. There are too many to mention.

The story of Terri that you are complaining about is all about real life, whether it mirrors some other film or not. It is intimate and not played up...also, I found nothing offbeat about the film. There was nothing in this film that I did not see the honesty and sincerity behind it. You mention music in this film but there is barely much of it.

As for Garden State, name one other film exactly like it. Good luck.

Jerry at the Movies
http://jerrysaravia.blogspot.com/