IMDb plot summary: A professor of chemistry wins the Nobel Prize. His wife joins him to Stockholm but his PhD. working son gets kidnapped. The kidnapper demands $2,000,000 = prize sum.
Directed by Randall Miller. Starring Alan Rickman, Bryan Greenberg, and Shawn Hatosy.
Nobel Son is a way, way, way too complicated thriller about an insufferable Nobel Prize winner, his wife, and his son, who is kidnapped while he's away accepting the Prize. I guess I won't spoil this by going any further into detail, but there are about 10 different "twists" going on here, and none of them are clear. I think there was an attempt to make this partially a dark comedy -- some of the big dramatic moments are so silly they feel like they must have been somewhat self-aware and meant as jokes -- but I think a startlingly large number of them were probably intended to be cool mindbending reveals. None of them are, especially as they render earlier scenes just absolutely baffling and obscure character motivation so many times it's impossible to know or care who is on whose side by the end. There is some enjoyment to be gotten out of the over-the-top performances of Alan Rickman as the Nobel Prize winner, who is level 10 obnoxious for no reason, and Eliza Dushku, the son's love interest, a spoken word poet who is just constantly writhing with pleasure at the small beauties of life. But overall it's just too convoluted and too convinced it's clever.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Nobel Son < Frank
Nobel Son < Annie (1999)
Nobel Son > Move Over, Darling
Nobel Son < Spider-Man 3
Nobel Son > Jane Eyre (1997)
Nobel Son > Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Nobel Son > Bullitt
Nobel Son > American Graffiti
Nobel Son > The Zen of Bennett
Nobel Son > The Machinist
Nobel Son < There's No Business Like Show Business
Final spot: #2914 out of 3581, or 19%.
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