Have you ever wished that a middle-aged white man from the Orange County suburbs was sitting next to you on a plane, telling you how much he loves his kids and showing you snapshots and home movies on his iPad? You haven’t? Then the movie The Other F Word is not for you. The bulk of this rambling, 99-minute documentary about West Coast punks who have children is crushingly banal, and the remainder is given to tearful descriptions of absent fathers, childhood traumas, and accidental deaths. Save your money and go to an AA meeting instead.
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Art Alexakis inThe Other F WordRoughly the first two-thirds of the movie records doughy white men sitting around with their families in drab suburban dwellings (not surprisingly, Flea and the guy from Blink 182 have the nicest houses) and extra-large SUVs. The crew also follows Jim Lindberg on a miserable 7-month Pennywise tour, during which the singer talks to his family on Skype when he is not wearily greeting another audience or dyeing his beard with Just For Men in an Econo Lodge bathroom. In the last third, the movie kicks into high pathos: Flea, Art Alexakis, Fat Mike, and Tony Cadena speak bitterly about their parents’ neglect, and Duane Peters talks about his son’s death in a car accident. There is much acoustic balladry.
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The guy from Rise Against bothers his daughterWhen Lars Frederiksen of Rancid takes his toddler to the playground in bondage pants and an “I HATE PEOPLE” shirt, the effect is supposed to be heartwarming and “humanizing”: look at this terrifying punk monster, playing sweetly with his child! He’s just like you and me. But the punk dress style, now at least 35 years old, is worn by infants, athletes, real estate agents, U.S. Marshals, and dowdy old pensioners. No one who has visited a city the size of Little Rock, Arkansas should be surprised to see a flabby man with a Mohawk pushing a stroller, much less view it as a heroic achievement. Do aging punks really deserve praise for spending time with their spawn? So what?Previously - Free Puppy