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Initial Thought: I honestly didn't know what to think about this movie. It looked pretty weird and the animation was looking kind of bleh. Also it didn't help that Kristen Wiig played a part here. Anyways we have had it at our theater for a couple weeks so I decided to just go ahead and watch it.
Characters/Acting: I really only had interest in this because Alexander Skarsgard is in it. He didn't disappoint me at all here either. Kristen Wiig was boring as usual for me and when she said the line about her being a piece when she was young just made me laugh. I don't know why but Bel Powley has this attractiveness to her even though she is also quite awkward looking. Her performance here was definitely of the more positive experiences of the movie.
Story: Lonely and artistic, Minnie chronicles her trials through expressive drawings and painfully honest missives confided to a tape recorder. One fateful evening alone with her mother's boyfriend, Minnie is confronted with her burgeoning sexuality for the first time, and suddenly this precocious teen is in way over her head. It's odd how very sexually graphic this movie is. I remember the commercials saying that it doesn't exploit her sexuality. I honestly think that it very much did exploit it. There are numerous graphic sex scenes involving her throughout the movie. It didn't bother me really, but I sure wasn't expecting it. It shared a lot of similarities with the Nymphomaniac films, but by no means as graphic as those films. The artwork was a mixture of really odd and terrible drawings to actually being quite creative. It had some pretty good moments. I didn't really laugh here, but there were scenes people in the theater laughed at that I honestly didn't see the humor of. The ending was pretty good though. It made up for the good chunk of a simple coming of age sex romp.
Directing/Writing: I never heard of Phoebe Gloeckner or read any of her stuff. I do know that the book she wrote is actually a bit more disturbed than the movie went. This is the first film that Marielle Heller wrote and directed. She is fairly decent, but I think she really needs to work on her storytelling aspect.
Final Thought: It was a decent one time watch. I wasn't expecting anything great or horrible. It was pretty much as I expected it would be. It has its moments. It also has its cons. I honestly didn't think this had anything new to offer the world. It's sort of just there. If you do choose to watch this just don't do so with your kids. It would just be really awkward seeing as it seems it should be directed towards them.
