Broken Flowers (2005)

Title: Broken Flowers
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Genre: Comedy? I guess???
Highs: None really.
Lows: More depressing then funny.
RhynoBot Grade: D+

Netflix list this movie as a comedy but I didn't find any part of the movie funny at all, not a single laugh. I don't really know how to categorize this movie. It's not a drama, nothing dramatic happens. It's not an action/adventure, in fact it is the antithesis of action since Bill Murray's character sits around depressed through 98% of the movie. I think this movie has strived to achieve such great lows that it is in a genre all alone, we'll call it a hang-man because that is exactly what you feel like doing to yourself as you watch this movie.

The premise of is Bill Murray's character in his younger days was a love'em and leave'em kind of guy with the ladies. We see him later in life as a vacant shell of a man with yet another failed relationship. He receives an unmarked letter in the mail from a former lover claiming that 20 years ago she bore his son and he is now on his way to come find him. Murray's neighbor who fancies himself an amateur private detective convinces Murray to go on a road trip to seek out the potential author of the letter by visiting five women he was know to have been involved with at the time. Hilarity ensues right, wrong! This turns out to be one calamity after another and never comes to any conclusion, just speculation. The movie closes with us not knowing any more information then when we started. Does he really have a son? Was the letter really written by one of the women he visited? Will he continue to look for his potential son? Well we'll never know since the movie ends abruptly with no resolution.

OK, we know Bill Murray excels at the blank faced melancholy emotionless stick but there has to be a payoff at some point. Utilize his sharp wit and hilarious sense of humor at some point to make it worth watching for the viewer. That payoff never came in Broken Flowers. This movie has a similar feel to it as "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" but by comparison Aquatic may as well have been "Animal House" on the hilarity scale (if you have not seen Life Aquatic it is not very funny).

This movie is depressing and pointless, avoid it.