Daily Blague

What a situation! There were only three movies out there that I was thinking of seeing, and my first choice, Because I Said So, got an awful review in yesterday's Times. So did Factory Girl, my second choice. I even considered Epic Movie, at least until I discovered its MetaCritic rating, a perilously low 17. Although Factory Girl, the movie about Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, and - oops! - a Bob Dylan-like figure, scored a 37 to Because I Said So's 30 (how abysmal is that?), the latter movie won my admission, partly because it was showing at eleven, right across the street, and partly because I'm crazy about Diane Keaton these days. (She has really shed Georgia Mozell, the creepily self-absorbed sister in Hanging Up.) I wound up liking Because I Said So very much. It occurred to me that today's critics are unlikely to be the parents of grown children, and therefore unable to sympathize with Ms Keaton's overprotective mom. I knew exactly what she felt, even though I knew she was going to have to change her ways. (In the end, love of another kind changes them for her.)

Call it a "chick-flick" if you must, but Because I Said So very well may feature the breakout performance of Gabriel Macht, a boy from the Bronx who seems at times to be channeling George Peppard, who shone at a time when "boyish" meant anything but "immature."

Read more about Because I Said So at Portico.