Captain Fantastic [DVD]

One of those wild stories set in the wilds of the good ol' US of A.Though I dare say there are families of such "Nature" that exist, this is truly an increadible exposé of juxtapositions. Our very essense, as creatures of the nature, and our over developed modern but disjointed enforced lifestyle in the western world is very well exposed.A father of 8 youngsters choses to leave behind the confinds of systematic modern life and live in the natural world having previously bought a large area of forest land. Here they are learning, training and surviving off the land. However, the children's bipolar mother is in hospital under close watch having had a serious downturn in which other mental health concerns take a strong hold and eventually she succumbs.Distraught and determined Dad, with his young family, make their way across the USA to her funeral; organised by their staunchly religeous grandfather. However, he blames the husband (Captain Fantastic) for making her condition worse. He is warned off that if they come near the funeral service he'll have this decadent nature/survivalist and harbinger of his daughter's death, arrested and the children taken into care.This story highlights a struggle of rights, autonamy, growing up, enlightened knowledge seeking, egos, preferences, incompatabilities and self-realisation.The genre is a strong "rights of passage" and "fish out of water" story. Characters are brilliantly portrayed by all the players, fabulous settings, 1st class script.Totally loved it.This has become one of my all-time favourite family movies.

I wouldn't call the father in this film demonstratively loving or affectionate, more dictatorial and belligerent in enforcing his idealised way of living. While I appreciate he has opened the minds of his children, that they are physically very healthy and well read, they're to some extent socially inept and unworldly. Exposing them to age inappropriate information/material, physical danger and harm could be seem as abuse. There's being honest and there's being brutal. There's just so little warmth from the father towards the children, it's painful to watch. They're like his own selfish project and he often focuses on his own desires and motivation way above theirs. The father realising there's a middle ground, demonstrating love and balance would have made this film way more enjoyable. The useful, moral and important messages within the film get somewhat lost by the aspects i've described and the ridiculous moments where they seem to pluck money for flight to Namibia, have a new house, petrol etc out of nowhere; them all sitting around their mothers beautiful looking week dead body... I kept waiting for it to become a delightfully inspiring film, but it just felt a bit cold and awkward. Great acting.

This movie had some good themes and ideas however;Making lightheartedness of children nudity is a nono. I am appalled that they allowed to show a child's bottom on the screen and not impressed. Secondly, they made a joke out of showing the same young child being gifted a sexual positioning book, disgusting!!!They completely ridiculed christianity and made Karl marx's ideas (communism) seem dandy.Overall the movie could have been better without the things I highlighted. It was inspirational in the fact that it represented that alternative and natural lifestyles are healthier for us and our kids but a great opportunity for a good movie here was missed.Not impressed.

This film ticks every last box on the liberal/leftist degenerate checklist; non stop swearing and extremely graphic conversations about sex seemingly done purely for shock value. Anti capitalist sentiment, pro nihilism, pro vulgarity, the advocating of Marxist ideologies and of course, the attacking of Christianity at every opportunity. I am a big fan of the movie ‘little miss sunshine’ its slightly melancholic and has some problems of its own but is still enjoyable; I was hoping that Captain Fantastic would be a similar kind of movie; how wrong I was; it is a very poor, very mean spirited and quite cynical counterfeit of that 2006 classic.There’s a whole host of grimy and very inappropriate scenes, a six year old child reading a book about sexual positions, that same child then graphically having the act of rape explained to them. The father of the family stands totally naked at one point, proudly talking about his genitals to a group of total strangers while sipping coffee and absolutely nothing is left to the imagination. There’s is another unsettling sequence in which the children dig up their mother’s dead body, burn it and then flush the ashes down the toilet, I’m not joking – this really happens! It doesn’t help that there is nothing even close to a likable character in this film, the father is almost unbearably mordant and like most intellectuals he hides his sneering hatred behind a veneer of smug sardonicism disguised as wisdom. The children aren’t much better and come off as a bunch of obnoxious, impertinent twits who are also very creepy. Adding to those problems, there is almost no story, there are plenty of speeches against capitalism and Christianity as well as plenty of subversive mocking of the former two things but there is nothing actually driving this thing forward,Make no mistake the people that greenlight, produce, write and direct movies like this are the same kind of people who celebrate abortion, they hate happy and functional families, they are vehemently anti god, they tend to be habitual users of recreational drugs, they hate capitalism, patriotism or any kind of prosperity, they see human beings as no better than animals, they will likely have a strange desire to worship the earth as well as a raging addiction to pornography or other sexually deviant practices, these people often come from very dysfunctional families and they are generally very angry and filled with hatred and cynicism. I have given that lowdown because these are the type of people who are now in charge not only of Hollywood but of most of the entertainment industry and movies like this are the net result. Apart from its hatefully sanctimonious tone, it seems this movie also has a secondary objective and that is to paint all people who live off grid as dangerous and unstable wackos who must be rounded up and made to assimilate; I know many people that have successfully built lives living off the grid and their lives look nothing like the fruitcakes shown in this picture.Captain Fantastic is a sad and misanthropic reflection of the times we now live in; ugly, macabre and seemingly nasty for the sake of being nasty, there is nothing to like about this film. It used to be that Hollywood allowed the odd gem to be sifted from the running stream of detritus, not anymore; it’s now a never ending torrent of filth, perversion, liberal woke propaganda, death, cynicism and in all just a celebration of dysfunction and degeneracy. The so called classification boards have a big part to play in this, both the BBFC in the UK and the MPAA in North America have long since abdicated their responsibility to protect audiences and have gladly played their part as accomplices in lowering the floodgates on vile and destructive content to younger and younger audiences. The material that goes into a 15 certificate film today is exponentially worse than what went into most 18 certificate films 30 years ago. Unfortunately, most people do indeed imprint on what they see and hear on television and in the movies. Look around at the general state of the world and the net results of this are plain to see.Whilst there is still a large mass of people who will stand under the fountain of vomit with their mouths open, cheering it all on, there is also a growing section of society who are sick and tired of it and what’s more, we demand better!!