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I really liked Knives Out, even though I do have a mild allergic reaction to overt woke messaging. There were several "good guy" white characters, including the old dead rich white man. Yes, the 1st-generation Latina is the one winning out in the end, it's obviously a movie of its time, but I think it did a pretty good job of being detective-movie-for-the-Trump-era. The family of humorously horrible people is very much a mix of clueless conservatives and out of touch liberal elites, and I think both sides are getting poked fun at. Also, it's just good in its own right. The clever inversion of the traditional detective story arc, while leaning into classic mystery tropes, was very well-done.
Curious to see how I feel about the sequel.
It's been quite some time since I've seen it, so I may have forgotten some details, but I don't think the family elder is a good person. Yes, the movie wants us to see him in a sympathetic light, but why should I care about the authorial intent?
His children are portrayed as an ungrateful bunch yes, but as the meme goes "My brother in Christ, you raised the children". What I see here is a story of a man who lucked into having a world-class talent in something (writing), and when his kids turned out to be only ordinary people he used his status to instill lifelong inferiority complexes in all of them. Taunting them about how they didn't manage to escape the long shadow of his fame, and when they grew up resentful and bitter using that bitterness as a proof that he was right to taunt them in the first place.
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One of my biggest issues with the first film was that we were not supposed to hate the SJW girl as much as the rest of the family, basically just by virtue of her being an SJW. Even though she did bad things, too, but she was portrayed sympathetically.
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I also agree that you can identify and critique "woke messaging" but still enjoy a film on its own merits - writing, acting, story, etc. I also enjoyed the first movie, although I was far more offended by Daniel Craig's Southern accent than I was by the film's celebration of white replacement.
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