Tom-2128

This movie is a comedy, drama, romance, sports movie, and a money movie (e.g. Wall Street, where the main character is trying to make a lot of money). The problem such a movie faces is maintaining a consistent tone. Remember Prizzi's Honor? JM solves that problem by using restraint. It doesn't go over the top, although its characters sometimes do. It has funny moments, but it's not Animal House or American Pie. It's a drama, but it keeps the stakes low. This isn't Armageddon: they aren't trying to save the world. There are no life or death decisions. The romantic stakes aren't that high either: Renee Zellweger loves Tom Cruise, but she's been in love before and if this doesn't work out, she will be again. The only really high stakes are the money. By keeping the stakes low, JM let's us watch it with a bit of detachment.

This is more of a drama than a comedy. A good test is whether the characters change. Here, Tom Cruise starts off completely cynical, abruptly changes to ridiculously idealistic, then spends the rest of the movie finding the right balance. Renee Zellweger starts by loving Tom Cruise from afar, then gets him, then has to work out her ambiguous feelings.

JM is fun to watch. The characters, though flawed, are sympathetic. We enjoy watching them succeed, fail (sometimes in funny ways), and try to discover what they really care about. It's complicated, thoughtful, and surprisingly subtle.

The issue raised by this movie is whether it's OK for parents to have cochlear implants put into their deaf children. One of the arguments against is that it would be making a decision that the child should be allowed to make for himself. As mfriend pointed out, that would be analogous to waiting until the child was 15 and then allowing him to decide whether he wanted to be literate. Since brain plasticity declines with age, if the CI is not implanted reasonably early, the child will not get the full use of it. That means that, to a large extent, the decision will have been made for him. Remember that if a child is taught to read, he can always choose not to later: many do. As cheriesnow pointed out, a child with a CI can choose not to use it. Although the surgery can impose physical limitations (because of the fragility of the equipment) that is due the the current state of the technology. In the future, that should change.