Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

That was an excellent one.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I bought this film completely by accident thinking it was an educational piece on how to tell stories. Turns out it was a film called "storytelling." As it turns out, it was an educational piece on how to tell stories.The movie is divided into two completely different and (more or less) unrelated stories. This is the only thing that kept me from giving it 10 stars, and in most cases, this faux pas (in my humble opinion) kills a film. But Todd Solondz pulls it off! This film uses characterful exaggerations to make its point throughout. The characters' emotional development in both stories is meaningful and their relationships are complex. This is particularly true of the second story, which takes its time and is at once candid and ridiculous. If you are on the fence about this movie, I think the one thing I can say that might change your mind about checking it out would have to be that it faces the truth and faces American issues as they are.Oh, and John Goodman is the man.

Storytelling is an interesting film because it's largely a critique of how Solondz approaches his work. As the title says, the movie is all about the way he tells his stories. Most of the negative criticism of Happiness focused on the perceived smugness and harshness of the directorial viewpoint, the sense that Solondz was looking down on his characters and mocking them for not being as smart or as sophisticated as he was. I never thought that criticism was accurate: for one thing, I felt that Solondz brought out the characters' pain and emotional torment, especially the torment of the father, far more than most conventionally "sympathetic" directors do. But Storytelling takes the critiques of Happiness seriously and places them right at the center of the film. In the "Fiction" part of the movie, Solondz shows us the complexities of people trying to understand and exploit each other's motives and desires. If his vision of the Selma Blair character is merciless in exposing her pretensions and hypocrisies, it's also equally unblinking in portraying her moving attempt to find her own viewpoint in a situation that turns her against herself in the cruelest way imaginable -- by making her feel responsible for her own degradation. Just as strikingly, the film's second segment, "Nonfiction," shows an art-house audience laughing smugly at the family on display: a pitch-perfect version of how many audiences reacted to the family in Happiness. At the very least, Storytelling shows that Solondz has thought deeply about his satirical method. While his films will never be for everyone's taste, I think this movie demonstrates that he approaches his subjects in good faith, with an artist's desire to deepen our concern for each other by facing squarely and honestly some of our worst qualities.

At first viewing I though this was the weakest of director Todd Solondz films, however like all of his works, it's impossible to forget once seen. Todd Solondze absorbed criticisms about exploitation, showing misery for misery's sake, and just generally being a "meanie", and turned them into the cinematic equivalent of a "dis song"(rap term for song made specifically as an attack or "beef" with another rapper), with Solondz against critics, carefully trying to explain the notions of "Storytelling". Our first story deals with sex, political correctness, race, and fiction writing, as a young liberal college girl has unpleasant and ironic sexual experience with her Black writing professor. Our second well...with the same subjects just this time with non-fiction in place of fiction. Here Solondz shows us yet another dysfunctional upper middle class Jewish family in chaos, but this time as a "documentary", which shows us the pathetic film maker, the cruel or otherwise ignorant family, and the audience who laughs and scoffs, at it all. This is a rare film, because it's a film maker addressing his critiques, himself, and his audience all at once. And it has plenty of Solondz trade mark cringe scenes, that veer drastically from comic to dramatic in a matter of breaths. The results are absorbing but like all Solondz it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and makes you honestly question your own moral compass. They say satire is dead if the audience cannot be shocked, but it's also dead if the audience cannot be shamed, in the days where South Park and Family Guy, are on non cable TV any afternoon (l love both shows), shock and shame are concepts so familiar they've lost some of their power. Thankfully just when we've seen it all and were sure that nothing matters and nothing can surprise, startle, or offend us, Todd Solondz will be there to show things can always get worse.

Writer/director Todd Solondz last rocked my world with Happiness, which was the sharpest, most unflinching black comedy I'd ever seen. He does it again with Storytelling, keeping his impeccable edge while exploring some intriguing new turf. No doubt wary after his previous ventures, Solondz attempts to circumvent some of the criticisms that less savvy viewers are bound to make. Sure enough, they go ahead and make them; the reviews are polarized. But the film is a masterpiece.The film has two parts. The first part, titled Fiction, focuses on a creative writing student Vi (Selma Blair), her Cerebral Palsy-stricken boyfriend Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick) and their professor Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom).The classroom setting provides an unusual venue: a story writing workshop within a story. Solondz puts one of the characters through a perversely traumatic experience, which we witness as viewers of the movie. Before we have a chance to pass judgment on Solondz, his character writes about the event in the 3rd person and reads the story in class. All accusations one might level against Solondz (namely: bad taste, plus every "ism" in the book) get made by the fellow students, who detest the story. But in the context of the movie, they're condemning an account of an event that actually happened! Very clever...In spite of some of the grotesque twists, I found myself laughing out loud fairly often. Solondz has a gift for rendering subtle ironies that become overwhelmingly funny.The lead characters are fascinating and multi-layered. Vi seems innocent, but if you pay close attention, you'll notice she's not particularly sincere. One would like to root for Marcus, but his condition doesn't excuse him for being a lousy writer and a self-absorbed a**hole. The professor may be a monster, but he is also very frank.The second part Nonfiction is also highly self-aware. It covers the making of a two-bit documentary. In the process, the dialog once again anticipates many of the charges some will make against Solondz (that he exploits his subjects and creates a sensational freak show for us to snicker at). There's a cameo role with Mike Schank, who was featured in real life in American Movie. The similarities between the documentary American Movie, the fiction Storytelling and the documentary within a fiction (tentatively titled American Scooby) are uncanny.Scooby (Mark Weber) is the ultimate apathetic suburban slacker teen. While very much spoiled and sheltered, he is also alienated from, and resentful of, his elders. He perks up a bit when there are no grownups around, but most of the time the "stupid" barrier is up and his eyes are half-closed and red from smoking pot. He's such a lost cause, he attracts the attention of an aspiring documentarian (Paul Giamatti).As you might expect, the rest of Scooby's family is a real piece of work. Scooby's dad (John Goodman) is loud and domineering. His mom (Julie Hagerty) is idiotic. His younger brother Brady (Noah Fleiss) is a jock, perhaps the closest to what we'd like to consider "normal".The brainy youngest brother, Mikey (Jonathan Osser) is a real standout. He tags around with the overworked El Salvadorian housemaid Consuelo (Lupe Ontiveros) and asks her lots of questions. His curiosity is cute, but his conceited insensitivity truly boggles the mind.Solondz definitely favors the sordid, but I'm not sure he does so gratuitously. I think he simply refuses to pretend, as so many other do, that the world is a tidy, simple place. (Those who seek to preserve such a notion are guaranteed to abhor his work.) But is it fair to berate Solondz just because he dares to present what others systematically avoid? Whose vision is more skewed: Solondz for pointing out the dog***t on our shoes, or the mainstream for ignoring it?I wish I could agree that his writings are contrived and distorted, but I don't think they are. Through the media, through the grapevine and sometimes with my own eyes, I've seen events that are every bit as twisted and "wrong" as those Solondz creates. Everywhere I look, I encounter people who could easily be incorporated into a Solondz script.Every storyteller recreates the world according to his/her own vision. Todd Solondz just happens to be vastly more perceptive and talented than most. Storytelling is one of the most insightful, clever and thought-provoking films I've ever seen. Watch it multiple times for maximum yield.