The Art of Storytelling and The Book of Henry
1,843,998
Published 2017-12-20
The Book of Henry is pretty close to an ideal awful movie. There's dimensions to watching the film that I can't convey fully in a condensed video, like how stop-start the plots are, how Henry gets sick and the movie basically stops what it was doing for twenty minutes waiting for him to die, and how watching the film is to go through a rolling process of trying to figure out what the film is trying to actually tell you. People who are familiar with Jurassic World should catch the similar ways that Book of Henry demonizes a woman for not behaving exactly and precisely as the mother figure that the filmmakers think she should be. Susan gets off light, though, since she isn't executed by dinosaur for the crime of texting.
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
All Comments (21)
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This movie features a wealthy person's idea of poverty, a stupid person's idea of intelligence, a sociopath's idea of empathy, and a mall ninja's idea of tactics.
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Say what you will, but it's an incredible achievement in character writing to make a movie about a child dying of brain cancer where the audience ends up rooting for the cancer.
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"he's not going to sell a gun to an 11 year old" Dan he's ALMOST TWELVE
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I dunno which is worse, supplanting your dead brother as Enchilada #1 because he died or staying Enchilada #2 as a constant reminder you'll never be better than your dead brother who died.
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"I wanted to give Henry emotional intelligence." Proceeds to write a character that's half Sheldon Cooper, half Jigsaw.
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movies like this baffle me not just because they're bad but because they could SO EASILY be fixed. And with 18 years to write the script it- boggles the mind. Just get rid of the mom. Mom abandons kids. Henry, a child prodigy, is now the Adult of the house. He cannot call CPS on his neighbor because then they might look into him and his brother's situation and he's terrified of the two of them being separated. He makes money in order to keep their house and the appearance of hard working parents who can never be around. His notes on this "perfect murder" aren't instructions, they're the reflections of a kid who is angry, forced to grow up much too soon, and can't figure out how everyone seems to ignore kids suffering. After his death his younger brother finds the notes and takes them to be instructions because he's a tiny kid grieving the loss of his only parental figure whom he thought the world of. Guess I'll just have to save this script for Home Alone 9: This Time He's Got A Sniper Rifle.
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"I'm a child who talks and thinks like a 40 year old divorcee with no social skills" is the worst trope ever made. That's problem #1 with the film imho
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"3 extra 10-round detachable mags" It's incredibly funny to me that Henry thinks Susan will need to take 40 SHOTS to kill Glen.
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"It was my brother's dying wish that his ashes be disposed of by being thrown at random people. He was kind of a dick like that"
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As a teacher, I need to say that Goddamnit Janice doesn't need any kind of concrete evidence. In fact we're trained to report any form of suspected abuse no matter why we think there may be abuse. Making a report that turns out isn't true has absolutely no repercussions.
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It's funny(ish) how suicide at the end of a movie always means "guilt confirmed, no further questions", even though suicide at the start of a movie almost always means "investigate the shit out of this because it's never just suicide".
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A grown man writing this and seeing Henry as "emotionally intelligent" is horrifying.
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Just want to point out that the same kid Henry makes fun of is the kid shown being bullied during Henry’s opening monologue. What a likable protagonist.
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If Henry's such a genius, why didn't he realize he could just tell Susan to hire an accountant after he died? There was absolutely no reason for him to try to teach her finances. She can pay someone to do that for her, and she won't risk screwing things up that way. And for that matter, I fail to see how a sniper rifle in the tree fort is a better idea for the murder than just hiding behind a tree until Glenn's back was turned and shooting him with a handgun. So much less evidence to dispose of that way, and you have plausible deniability if you get caught with the gun before the murder. Admittedly, this sort of overengineering does seem like the kind of thing a child prodigy without a lot of practical experience would come up with, but the movie seems to show no self-awareness that it's a sign of immaturity, not genius.
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An important note about the grocery store scene: Henry is wrong, Susan is right, don’t jump in. In cases of abuse, you should NEVER accuse or tell off the abuser in any way, unless you are DAMN SURE you can protect the victim from that point forward. Because you aren’t the one who is going to pay for it in the end, the victim is.
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"At Harvard, he [Gregg Hurwitz] was a student of psychologist Jordan Peterson who influenced his writing." - Wikipedia LMAO
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It's definitely super awesome when a female rape victim is created for, and exists solely for, motivating a male character. And super original too. Good job guys!
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Am I the only person who thinks there's kind of an idea for a horror movie here? A terrifying bad seed type continues to control his sheeplike, unstable and grieving mother to carry out his will even after his death?
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To be fair to Susan's flower-as-a-metaphorical-Jesus/Henry story, Henry's death DID make things better. Specifically, it allowed Goddammit Janice to enjoy a quiet lunch for the first time in years
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Henry is the worst kind of "precocious child" character -- the one that the writer doesn't realize is basically just a tiny, abusive adult. I've never wanted a child to die of brain cancer more.
