Common Sense Media Review
By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Neighbors comically deal with pandemic; language, racism.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Stuck Together
What's the Story?
In STUCK TOGETHER, under the pressure of pandemic lockdown, espousing truths, half-truths, and outright ignorance about Covid, the inhabitants of a Paris rental building work out relationships with spouses, children, and neighbors. As a 10-year-old narrator describes all the things he loves about his dad, Tony (Francois Damien), it becomes clear that Dad is a racist, misogynist jerk who drove away his far more reasonable wife. Tony, owner of the building and other business as well, can't speak a sentence without offending some person or group. And his admiring son, we understand, is learning to be just like dad. But the tenants are equally terrible in their own ways. Jumping to racist conclusions seems built-in. The new "North African" subletter keeps to herself by day as the other tenants complain she's breaking pandemic restrictions by going out every night. Samuel (Tom Leeb), the online fitness instructor, pushes his pregnant wife Agatha (Alison Wheeler) out of their tiny apartment when he livestreams so his female followers won't know he's married. Martin (Dany Boon, also the film's director) rabidly sprays hand sanitizer in his mouth and is in a constant state of panic over invisible germs everywhere. When Claire (Laurence Arne), his attorney wife, visits a client in jail, he won't let her back into their apartment. Yet he's fine with letting his daughter play outside with a neighbor boy and he's fine with standing inches away from others in the building. The owner of a shuttered bar sells her powerful pear liquor as a hand-sanitizer to get by while the building's janitor Paolo (Jorge Calvo) worries about his wife, in the hospital for weeks with Covid.
Is It Any Good?
Stuck Together is a creaky attempt at finding the hidden good in people by way of mocking the ugly. The humor verges on the idiotic, presenting a baseline for humanity as a bunch of selfish, ill-informed, racist, misogynist, and otherwise offensive people. The movie tries unconvincingly to imply that the crisis has made people both worse and better. The trouble is the remarkable transitions from repugnant to decent, from idiotic to intelligent, from hostile to kind, from exclusionary to embracing that some characters supposedly undergo are all utterly unfounded. Nothing we see could possibly transform the macho racist misogynist to a warmhearted exemplar of acceptance and goodness.
Worse yet, there are no surprises here. It's clear from the start that the mysterious "North African" new tenant everyone suspects of wrongdoing will turn out to be the most heroic person among them. At times the writer-director doesn't even seem to know his own characters. An accomplished criminal attorney "admits" that she's not assertive, a conclusion she comes to because a brainless delinquent client has fired her, and her boss, the uncle of that lawbreaker, gets mad at her. Her insistence that those events exposed a character flaw in her is as ridiculous as it is offensive, insinuating that competent professional women crumble and blame themselves when other people behave badly. Rare touching moments, too few and too late, do nothing to redeem this.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about what the pandemic rules are in this movie. Does it seem as if characters are complaining about improper behavior of others while behaving in exactly the same way themselves?
The movie implies that selfish people suddenly become cooperative and community-minded, essentially changing into different people, by the story's end. Do you believe people change that drastically and that quickly for the better? Why or why not?
Do the characters here seem to be portrayed as unrealistically stupid? Do you think that works as a comic device? Why or why not?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : October 20, 2021
- Cast : Dany Boon , Francois Damien , Tom Leeb , Liliane Rovere , Laurence Arne , Alison Wheeler
- Director : Dany Boon
- Inclusion Information : Middle Eastern/North African Movie Director(s) , Middle Eastern/North African Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Comedy
- Run time : 125 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : October 27, 2021
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