Glass

Let's get this out of the way first: The repeated bit where a character explains something that is a common part of comic books, trying to relate that to something going on in the movie? That gets real old real fast. It's like zombie movies where the characters act like they've never seen or heard of zombie movies. Even if you figure the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't exist there, they clearly have comic books, so the concepts shouldn't be that foreign, or necessary to belabor so obviously. It ends up giving the impression Shyamalan thinks his story is so intricate the audience needs this kind of hand-holding to follow what's going on.

Granted, you rarely go wrong betting on the under when it comes to our intelligence, but this was a bit much.

That aside (and it's a lot to put aside because it happens a lot), I liked the movie well enough. It doesn't do anything for my impression of the mental health professionals, or the mental health industry, but as my friend observed, those almost always get portrayed badly in movies. I was annoyed with Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson), right off the bat. She said something about how she specialized in treating people like David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who suffered from delusions of grandeur. And something about how she said it made me think, if that was the case, she needed to be treating herself.

The very end explains her attitude, her absolute confidence in what she's selling. Though you'd think she might notice that the people who are running things now are doing a pretty shitty job of it. Has she seen our world lately? It's a radioactive trash fire. A monkey with epilepsy could hardly do worse.

Ultimately, I wanted more of Elijah (Sam Jackson), David, and Kevin's (James McAvoy) various personalities interacting. That was my biggest complaint. Not even fighting necessarily. The part where they're at least in the same room talking, while Dr. Staple tries to deconstruct them, that was fun.

The movie spends a lot of time with them separated, Dr. Staple talking with them one-on-one, or the threads dealing with the civilian in each of their lives. I really did not care about any of the civilians. I still haven't seen Split, for one thing, so everything with Casey Cooke fell entirely flat for me (I still get the gist of what happened in that movie, there just isn't much emotional impact). Or maybe I felt like it was painted like a tragic romance, but Kevin seems way too old for her. Maybe it was the dialogue. It was a little stilted and clunky at times.

It's not exactly the movie I wanted, but even most of the stuff I didn't think I was interested in was enjoyable.