I was going to type something about having had a "generally favorable" (according to metacritic) weekend, but when I checked the page for The Namesake, I found out that the movie had "universal acclaim."

I hadn't read the book by Jhumpa Lahiri, but M. says the film was pretty faithful. The story is touching and it resonated with my far less dramatic immigration/name confusion personal history. I am a bit surprised that the film crossed the threshold above "generally favorable " reviews because I thought the production was a bit flawed. Nitpicks: the name motif was a bit heavy handed--I imagine that the audience for this kind of film could make the connections even if the exposition was more subtle. The film was kind of long and slow and the filmmakers seemed to compensate by making sometimes jarring cuts and editing in loud music transitions that seemed a bit out of place. These annoyances didn't really diminish my enjoyment of the story, but having seen the name of Mira Nair generally praised I expected more nuance in the production.


IMDB page
Official Site

Kal Penn wrote some kind of blog for the movie, and now he gets to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Good thing teaching is easy.