Changeling

The first thing I noticed about this movie was how much Angelina Jolie looks like my friend Colette. I'd never noticed it before, but I think if Colette would dye her hair and run around in a cloche she would be a dead ringer for Christine Collins.

The second thing I noticed was how different the actual movie was from the movie I thought this would be. One big thing that threw me off was the title. To me, a changeling is a fat and brainless (or at least airheaded) baby that malicious fairies put in your cradle when they steal your real child. I thought the child they returned to the mother would look exactly like the real one, but the mother would know it wasn't him because of his behavior. I also didn't think she would figure it out right away--I thought it would be a gradual realization that this was not her son. I guess I must have missed the part on the movie poster about this being "a true story," but I expected some sort of weird supernatural element that I didn't find.

The third thing I noticed was that the movie lost momentum and slowed to a crawl after about an hour and 20 minutes--just after the boy dug up the bones. I remember looking at the time and thinking, "there's AN HOUR left??" but then thirty minutes later it got interesting again, since we were led to believe that Walter wasn't dead.

It was annoyingly frustrating that Christine never got closure, after several close calls. I was slightly mollified by the text at the end which more or less told us that Walter was never found, but I sure had been hoping for a happy ending. If I had believed the idea that it was a true story, the bittersweet ending would have been somewhat easier to swallow. During the movie I was thinking the story seemed really realistic but I didn't let myself believe it; after all, when I read "The Bridges of Madison County," that seemed really realistic too. It was mostly just little things (like the radio preacher's weird name. If this had been a made-up story, I don't think they would have made up such a weird name).

When I saw that the Burn Notice guy was in the movie, I was glad, because I like him in his TV show. Too bad it didn't take long to decide he should stick with TV. His accent was so horrible that it was distracting. Also annoying, though slightly less so: while some characters in the movie looked convincingly like people from the 1920s, there were a few (like the whore in the asylum) who for some reason looked like they belonged smack dab in this century. It could have been worse, though. I saw in the trivia section on imdb.com that Hilary Swank and Reese Witherspoon both wanted the lead in this movie. My friend Colette could have done a better job looking the part than they could have!

Overall this was a decent movie and not a waste of time. Angelina Jolie has been in more hokey movies than good ones (Taking Lives? Tomb Raider? Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, for Pete's sake?) but she picked a good one here. I guess you can't go wrong with Clint Eastwood.