CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC opens with hippie survivalist, Ben Cash’s, eldest son killing a handsome buck dear with a knife. In addition to teaching his seven children survivalist skills, Ben teaches them to hate American capitalism and religion, especially Christians, while turning all the children into fans of the anti-capitalist, libertarian socialist intellectual Noam Chomsky. The next day, while visiting the nearby town, Ben’s sister tells him over the phone that his wife, Leslie, has killed herself in New Mexico after a long illness. Leslie’s father doesn’t want Ben at the funeral. The father promises to have Ben arrested if he shows up with his children. Ben decides to do just that.

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a bit too bizarre, annoying and abhorrent to be entertaining or satisfying, unless you agree with the title character’s politics and philosophy. The movie makes it clear some of Ben’s survivalist training of his children has gone too far, endangering their safety. Otherwise, the movie totally sides with Ben’s Anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, atheist, leftist fallacies and falsehoods. CAPTAIN FANTASTIC also contains strong foul language and other crude, explicit, abhorrent content.

HEADLINE: ** Hateful Leftist Fallacies and Falsehoods **

Title: CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

Quality: * * Acceptability: -4

SUBTITLES: None

WARNING CODES:

Language: LLL

Violence: VVV

Sex: SS

Nudity: NNN

MPAA RATING: R

RELEASE: July 8, 2016

TIME: 120 minutes

STARRING: Viggo Mortensen, George MacKay, Frank Langella, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Steve Zahn, Ann Dowd, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Erin Moriarty, Kathryn Hahn

DIRECTOR: Matt Ross

PRODUCERS: Lynette Howell Taylor, Jamie Patricof, Shivani Rawat, Monica Levinson

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Nimitt Mankad, Declan Baldwin

WRITER: Matt Ross

BASED ON THE NOVEL/PLAY BY: N/A

DISTRIBUTOR: Bleecker Street Media

CONTENT: (HHH, APAPAP, AcapAcapAcap, SoSoSo, AbAbAb, FRFRFR, C, LLL, VVV, SS, NNN, A, DD, MM) Very strong humanist, Anti-American, anti-capitalist, socialist worldview with very strong attacks (including at least one foul-mouthed attack) on “organized religion” and belief in God and one on Christians making them out to be the worst of the worst, with a veneration of one character’s Buddhist beliefs, which are overtly described as a “philosophy” and not a religion, but Christian father-in-law and his pastor seem positive despite the humanist, bigoted attacks on faith by the protagonist; 24 obscenities (including a fair amount of “f” words and little girl blasphemously says inscription about God on a tombstone is BS) and seven strong profanities; some very strong and strong violence includes teenage boy attacks male deer with knife and his bloody hand with a bloody knife in it is shown, father takes deer’s heart and gives it to the boy to take a bite and he does, father trains children in the heart of hand-to-hand combat using sticks as knives, boy hurts his hand severely while rock climbing and slams into rock face, teenage girl falls off roof onto vehicle and then onto pavement and almost kills herself, corpse is cremated by a lake, and its ashes flushed down toilet later, some video game violence is shown, and it’s said that children’s mother has slit her wrists and committed suicide, and father tells the children that mother killed herself; no depicted sex, but father explicitly describes sexual intercourse to his young daughter after she asks what it is, father later gives sex manual JOY OF SEX to young girl to show her, teenage girl briefly relates the pedophilia plot of the novel LOLITA (she says the writer makes readers both hate and pity, or even like, the mixed-up pedophile protagonist in the novel), and teenagers kiss, and boy proposes marriage right away because it’s the first girl he ever kissed; rear male and female nudity, full frontal male nudity when man walks out of his family’s bus totally naked in front of other people; alcohol use; no smoking but a reference to the crack epidemic of the 1980s; and, strong miscellaneous immorality includes father leads his seven children in a ruse to steal food from a grocery store and they get away with it, woman’s will asks family to cremate her and flush her ashes down a toilet, and they do just that, father endangers children’s lives a couple times, in laws seem to hate one another at times, lying, older teenage boy in hippie family says he’s become a Maoist, father has taught his children to mischaracterize the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in a false and leftist way (movie conveniently forgets to mention that labor unions and not just corporations benefit from the decision), and angry boy tells father “I hate you” twice but apologizes after he does it the second time.

GENRE: Drama

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older teenagers and adults

REVIEWER: Dr. Tom Snyder

REVIEW: CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a quirky drama with comic touches about a modern-day leftist hippie raising his seven children alone in the wilderness like crazy survivalists, then having to question his parental skills when his sickly wife suddenly kills herself after spending three years in a mental hospital far away. CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a bit too bizarre, annoying and abhorrent, with a lot of atheist and leftist fallacies and falsehoods being promoted, along with many harsh obscenities and frank references to sex and death.

The movie opens with the father, Ben Cash’s, eldest son, Bo, killing a handsome buck dear with only a knife. In addition to teaching his seven children survivalist skills, Ben teaches them how to hate American capitalism and religion, especially Christians, while making all the children fans of anti-capitalist libertarian socialist, and possible Anti-Semite, Noam Chomsky.

The next day, while visiting the nearby town, Ben’s sister tells him that his wife, Leslie, has killed herself in New Mexico, and Leslie’s father doesn’t want Ben at the funeral. The father promises to have Ben arrested if he shows up at the funeral with his children.

At first, Ben agrees not to go to New Mexico, but the sorrow of his children makes him change his mind. So, they load up the VW bus and drive to New Mexico. As the journey to New Mexico unfolds, the movie reveals that Ben’s wife developed symptoms of extreme bi-polar post-partum depression after the birth of their youngest child, a son.

The family finally makes it to New Mexico. However, Ben shows up at the church funeral with his wife’s last will and testament, which requested that she be cremated and her ashes flushed down the toilet. Given Ben’s own attitude against organized religion, especially Christianity, a clash with his father-in-law seems inevitable.

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a bit too bizarre, annoying and abhorrent to be really entertaining or satisfying, unless you agree with the title character’s politics and philosophy. The movie makes it clear that some of Ben’s survivalist training of his child has gone too far, endangering their safety. However, otherwise, the movie totally sides with Ben’s Anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, atheist, leftist fallacies and falsehoods.

The movie doesn’t just attack America’s capitalist society and organized religion, which sometimes do indeed deserve criticism, from the Left or the Right. It also includes a couple nasty, and even foul-mouthed, overt attacks against Christians, Christian theology (which is likened to a superstitious fairy tale) and the very idea of God. In one of them, the little girl in the movie says a reference to God on a tombstone is BS.

At another point, Ben notes that his wife was a Buddhist, but that her idea of Buddhism was as a philosophy, not as a religion. This is true as far as it goes, since Buddhism doesn’t really worship a god, but why can’t Buddhism, not to mention Christianity, be both a religion AND a philosophy? For example, although Buddhism doesn’t worship a personal god like Christianity, it does have its mystical side. Furthermore, some Buddhists can be seen praying to Buddha statues for specific blessings, even though such prayers are not a worshipful kind of prayer like a prayer to Jesus might be, but more like a prayer of gratitude to the Buddhist notion of “enlightenment” or awakening and Buddha’s alleged “discovery” of this notion and or way of living. Thus, although the movie is right to point out Buddhism is a non-theistic “philosophy” without a god, Buddhism is still a religion because it offers a set of rituals and behaviors, a moral code and a goal of enlightenment or spiritual/psychological transformation.

In addition to its attacks on Christianity, God, organized religion, capitalism, and American society, and its inaccurate if not false promotion of Buddhism as merely a philosophy, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC contains many strong obscenities and profanities and several lewd scenes. In several scenes, one of the children appears naked from behind. In another scene, the father is seen totally naked from the front. In still another scene, the father explicitly teaches his little girl what men and women do during sexual intercourse, soon after which he hands her a copy of the notorious sex manual titled THE JOY OF SEX, which she views, then sets down.

Finally, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC contains a couple strong scenes of violence. For example, it shows the bloody knife with which the eldest son killed the male dear. The father then takes the dear’s heart and hands it to the son, who promptly takes a bite. In another scene, one of the female teenagers falls off a roof onto the hood of a vehicle, then plummets to the ground. This last incident prompts the father to question whether his survival training of his children hasn’t gone too far.

Taken all together, the Anti-Christian, Anti-American, anti-capitalist, leftist fallacies and falsehoods in CAPTAIN FANTASTIC are abhorrent. The crude, explicit language and content are also abhorrent, as is the movie’s veneration of the Anti-American, socialist intellectual Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s contributions to linguistics are worth studying, but his political views and beliefs about morality much less so.

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SUMMARY: CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a quirky, sometimes comical, drama about a modern-day leftist hippie raising his seven children alone in the wilderness like crazy survivalists, then having to question his parental skills when his sickly wife suddenly kills herself after spending three years in a mental hospital far away. CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a bit too bizarre, annoying and abhorrent, with a lot of atheist and leftist fallacies and falsehoods being bandied about, along with many harsh obscenities and frank (if not disturbing) references to sex and death.

IN BRIEF:

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC opens with hippie survivalist, Ben Cash’s, eldest son killing a handsome buck dear with a knife. In addition to teaching his seven children survivalist skills, Ben teaches them to hate American capitalism and religion, especially Christians, while turning all the children into fans of the anti-capitalist, libertarian socialist intellectual Noam Chomsky. The next day, while visiting the nearby town, Ben’s sister tells him over the phone that his wife, Leslie, has killed herself in New Mexico after a long illness. Leslie’s father doesn’t want Ben at the funeral. The father promises to have Ben arrested if he shows up with his children. Ben decides to do just that.

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC is a bit too bizarre, annoying and abhorrent to be entertaining or satisfying, unless you agree with the title character’s politics and philosophy. The movie makes it clear some of Ben’s survivalist training of his children has gone too far, endangering their safety. Otherwise, the movie totally sides with Ben’s Anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, atheist, leftist fallacies and falsehoods. CAPTAIN FANTASTIC also contains strong foul language and other crude, explicit, abhorrent content.