Washington's adaptation boasts talented actors but lacks a nuanced script and the on-screen chemistry necessary to elevate the drama beyond the sentimental. Seeing this movie with your kids and not discussing the weighty themes would be a missed opportunity once you've gotten through the moments that make you blush, use this as a time to speak to young men about emotionality, courage, and gentlemanliness and to young women about setting boundaries, waiting for love, and choosing to love through hard times.Īn edited version of this story to remove the brief sex scene and tame the language would not hurt the story or diminish its impact. The discussions of their family histories and the frankness of their conversations, are refreshing and feel very honest. The love of the parental figures for Jordan is well developed and expressed. We also found a few comments from our fellow movie-goers to be distracting, as they appreciated the physique of the actors.Īs a story, this is stirring and emotional. The sex scene itself is abbreviated but the small amounts of nudity are enough to make a parent blush sitting next to young teens or tweens. A few, small, glaring moments did make us uncomfortable as the stars were in bed together in several scenes and the discussion turned sexual. Our family saw this film together, and we were able to talk about some deep themes and appreciate the emotion the movie brought to the surface. Families can discuss the importance of communication, empathy, and perseverance, the enduring legacy of lost loved ones, and how letters and journals can keep a person's beliefs alive. Occasional strong language includes "s-t," "bitch," "wigger," and more. While the film's director and leads are Black, Dana's life centers around White best friends, and the issue of colorism is explored: Light-skinned Jordan's Blackness is disputed (or ridiculed) by classmates. There are also several scenes of Dana and Charles flirting, kissing, and eventually making love (his bare butt and both of their bare shoulders and sides are visible). Expect depictions of military violence - an explosion kills Charles and severely injures others in his unit - as well as footage from 9/11 of the planes hitting the Twin Towers. Jordan), who, while deployed post-9/11, wrote in a special journal for their unborn and then-baby son, Jordan. It tells the story of her late partner, U.S. There is a particularly jarring moment when Dana reacts to the breaking story of 9/11 in the New York Times newsroom and then, before she or we have absorbed the horror of that, the story unsatisfyingly shifts to her life much later, an entirely different situation.Parents need to know that A Journal for Jordan is director Denzel Washington's adaptation of former New York Times editor Dana Canedy's ( Chanté Adams) memoir. The narrative jolts episodically back and forth between the early days of their relationship, their happiness living together and her grim and lonely widowhood and single-motherhood in which she has some supportive female friends and the regulation Gay Male Friend (very similar to the one in The Devil Wears Prada). So they are apart a lot when he is training, and then, tragically, seeing action in the Middle East. It’s a romantic drama based on the bestselling 2008 memoir from publisher and former New York Times reporter Dana Canedy, about the journal that her soldier husband Charles Monroe King wrote for their infant son Jordan just before King’s death in Iraq – telling Jordan how to respect women, himself and his country.Ĭhanté Adams plays Canedy, a young New York journalist in the 90s who falls hard for Charles (Michael B Jordan): a sweet, idealistic guy in the US army who has no desire for her to abandon her career for him. D irector Denzel Washington and his stars do their best with this bland, shallow and awkwardly structured film.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |