Now Playing: Win Win (2011)

One of our readers contacted me last week asking a favor. That favor was simply to go see Win Win in the theater. That reader was @staciedenola from twitter, you'll also see her regularly in the comments. I love our readers! So to put it simply, that was a pretty easy favor to do so I headed off after work today to catch a cheap showing. Unfortunately, the only theater it was playing at in the city didn't have a cheap day, so I ended up paying full pop for it. Hit the jump, and we'll find out if it was still worth the price of admission.


Win Win has a nice sweet story about a man down on his luck who meets a boy who is definitely not having an easy life either. Mike Flaherty is a lawyer in a small town whose practice is not getting a lot of clients, and his existing clientele consists mostly of the extremely elderly. Mike also coaches a high school wrestling team which, to put it mildly, sucks. One of his clients is Leo Poplar, and old man beginning to suffer from dementia, and he now needs a legal guardian to take care of his affairs. After being unable to find his daughter, and seeing that there's a $1500/month commission for taking the job, he volunteers himself as a guardian. He takes the checks but just dumps Leo into the local Home for the elderly. Soon after, he finds Leo's grandson Kyle on the doorsteps of Leo's old house. Just hang on, this is going somewhere, I promise! It turns out Kyle is damn good at wrestling so they start taking care of him too, letting him live with them. There's a lot going on in the movie, and it's a fairly complex situation with plenty of conflicts of interest. But to be honest, it comes across far better in the film than I've been able to explain here.

Mike gets Kyle ready for a big match.

I really loved all the characters, and the actors who played them did a great job. I've heard that Alex Shaffer, who plays Kyle, is actually a real champion wrestler, and not an actor, but I really liked his down to earth feeling. Mike is played by the very talented Paul Giamatti, and seeing him in this just makes me wish he were in more movies. Lastly, I'd like to mention Amy Ryan who plays Mike's wife as she comes across as a great mom who is super protective of her kids, and even Kyle after a very short amount of time. Not that she smothers them, but she does mention getting into a fist fight on Kyle's behave once which was very funny.

The comedy was good, but it was very subtle. Not a laugh out loud riot, just amusing and pleasant to watch. I often had a smile on my face and I just had a good ol' time watching Win Win. I believe this is also in part due to the wonderful performances and good characters. I should also mention that the wrestling was entertaining to watch. Although the matches were often short, it was still often tense and filled with energy. Whatever the reason, I can't deny I had a good time.

When the credits began to roll, and I walked out of a theater I drove all the way across the city to see a show that didn't even end up being any cheaper, I thought how glad I was that I had seen Win Win. I don't care that I spent more money to be able to see this movie, and I'm glad I was able to support it. It had a charming small town feel that I really liked, and I can't think of a single thing I could complain about. If you can see this movie, you should definitely check it out. I don't think you'll lose anything if you wait for it to come out on dvd/bluray or if you stream it off Netflix. But I sure did have a nice time with a refreshing movie at the theater today.